Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/262
These commas cannot possibly indicate anything but parenthesis; but, if the comma'd words were really a parenthesis, we ought to have would she instead of she would. The four sentences that now follow are all of one pattern. The bad stopping is probably due to this same confusion between the parenthetic and the non-parenthetic. But it is possible that in each the two commas are independent, the first being one of those that are half rhetorical and half caused by false analogy, which have been mentioned as common after initial And and For; and the second being the comma wrongly used, as we have maintained, before substantival that-clauses.
Whence, it would appear, that he considers that all deliverances of consciousness are original judgments.–Balfour.
Hence, he reflected, that if he could but use his literary instinct to feed some commercial undertaking, he might gain a considerable...–Hutton.
But, depend upon it, that no Eastern difficulty needs our intervention so seriously as...–Huxley.
And yet, it has been often said, that the party issues were hopelessly confused.–L. Stephen.
A less familiar form of this mistake, and one not likely to occur except in good writers, since inferior ones seldom attempt the construction that lead to it, is sometimes found when a subordinating conjunction is placed late in its clause, after the object or other member. In the Thackeray sentence, it will be observed that the first comma would be right (1) if them had stood after discovered instead of where it does, (2) if them had been omitted, and any had served as the common object to both verbs.
And to things of great dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater.–Burke.
Any of which peccadilloes, if Miss Sharp discovered, she did not tell them to Lady Crawley.–Thackeray.
6. The misplaced comma.
Some authors would seem to have an occasional feeling that here or hereabouts is the place for a comma, just as in