7 Tips for Editing to Improve Usage

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How do you make sure you’re writing right? Crafting prose is mostly a matter of using the right words for the job. Here are some steps to help you achieve that goal.

1. Look up the definition of an unfamiliar word and be sure you understand the meaning before you use it.
It’s easy to deploy a word you’ve just read or heard, mistakenly believing you understand its definition or its connotation, only to confuse or accidentally mislead your readers. Always double-check a term you’ve never used before. (Consider doing the same with words you’ve used before and think you know.)

2. Search a thesaurus or a synonym finder for the precise meaning, taking care to notice the different connotations of similar words.
Flag stock words and phrases, and thumb or click through a print or online resource to select a more exact or accurate synonym. But be alert to seemingly similar words with distinct senses.

3. Keep your writing clear and coherent, and avoid pretentious or overly formal language.
Write to communicate, not to impress. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Don’t dumb down, but don’t let your writing get in the way of your message. There’s a fine line between elegance and pomposity.

4. Select the strongest nouns and verbs before you select adjectives and adverbs.
Words that modify nouns and verbs can enhance clarity of thought and vividness of imagery, but if they upstage the words they’re supposed to support, strengthen the actor and action words. When you do so, an adjective or adverb may no longer be necessary.

5. Seek opportunities to use repetition for rhetorical effect while, at the same time, you watch for careless redundancy.
Take care that you don’t repeat yourself unless you do so to emphasize your point.

6. Read your draft aloud to help you refine grammar and usage. If something doesn’t sound right to you, it probably doesn’t read right to your audience, either.
Recitation of your writing is time consuming, but that’s how you find the awkward wording or phrasing you didn’t stumble over in your silent review.

7. Ask someone else to read your writing and critique it.
People you draft to read your draft need not offer solutions to problems of grammar, usage, organization, and logic; they can simply highlight problematic words, phrases, sentences, and passages, and offer more detail if necessary while leaving the problem solving to you.

This last step isn’t practical for every writing task or assignment, but if a piece of prose is important enough to you, and you have a reliable, word-savvy person on hand, ask to borrow their eyes and the brain attached to them. (You, of course, will reciprocate when called on.)

5 Cases of Excessive Commas

The rules about commas can seem so complicated — and contradictory — that writers can (almost) be forgiven for tossing in an extra one or two. Here are several examples of overly generous deployment of commas.

1. “If a killer asteroid was, indeed, incoming, a spacecraft could, in theory, be launched to nudge the asteroid out of Earth’s way, changing its speed and the point of intersection.”
This thirty-word sentence is littered with six commas — one for every five words — five of them appearing before the halfway point. By simply bending the rule about bracketing interjections with commas — a rule that advocates of open punctuation flout routinely anyway — the number is reduced by two, rendering the sentence more free flowing: “If a killer asteroid was indeed incoming, a spacecraft could, in theory, be launched to nudge the asteroid out of Earth’s way, changing its speed and the point of intersection.”

One more comma can be eliminated by relocating the parenthetical phrase “in theory” to an earlier position in the sentence, so that the comma after incoming does double duty: “If a killer asteroid was indeed incoming, in theory, a spacecraft could be launched to nudge the asteroid out of Earth’s way, changing its speed and the point of intersection.”

2. “The metaphor, ‘The world is a machine,’ began to replace the metaphor, ‘The world is a living organism.’”
In this sentence, the comma preceding each instance of metaphor implies that that metaphor is the only one — not just in the sentence, but anywhere. (But two metaphors are expressed here, and innumerable others exist.) Metaphor, appearing in apposition to the two brief quotations, should not be set off from them: “The metaphor ‘The world is a machine’ began to replace the metaphor ‘The world is a living organism.’”

3. “The event is part of a catchy, public health message about the importance of emergency preparedness.”
Catchy and “public health” are not coordinate adjectives. The point is not that the message is catchy and public health; it’s that the public health message is catchy. Therefore, no comma is necessary: “The event is part of a catchy public health message about the importance of emergency preparedness.”

If, by contrast, the sentence read, for example, “The event is part of a catchy, quirky message about the importance of emergency preparedness,” note that because catchy and quirky are parallel — they are coordinate adjectives — a comma should separate them.

4. “The report was completed in December, 2012.”
A comma is necessary between a month and a year only if a date is specified (“The report was completed on December 1, 2012”): “The report was completed in December 2012.” (The same rule applies when the name of a season appears in place of the name of a month: “The report was completed in fall 2012.”)

5. “Jones traveled by boxcar from California to New York with fellow fledgling artist, John Smith, sketching the American landscape along the way.”
Commas are necessary with this type of apposition only if the epithet is preceded by an article (“Jones traveled by boxcar from California to New York with a fellow fledgling artist, John Smith, sketching the American landscape along the way”): “Jones traveled by boxcar from California to New York with fellow fledgling artist John Smith sketching the American landscape along the way.” Unfortunately, this type of error has gone viral — its ubiquity is mistaken for propriety — and is seemingly ineradicable.

When Is a Question Not a Question?

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Inclusion or exclusion of a question mark is usually a straightforward matter. However, there are instances in which what are framed as questions should end with other punctuation, and occasionally, a statement might be followed by a question mark. A discussion of exceptions to basic use of the question mark follows.

Questions are statements of inquiry intended to elicit a response — for example, “What is the matter with you?” — but not all inquiries or seeming inquiries are, technically, questions.

Depending on context, a sentence may or may not merit a question mark. For example, the rhetorical question “You didn’t break my antique vase,” uttered in an alarmed tone after the speaker has witnessed that very action, would be voiced with downward inflection. The speaker is not asking for a response; he or she is essentially thinking out loud while processing the traumatic incident.

But if the speaker asks someone to confirm that his or her suspicion of the other person’s complicity is unfounded, he or she would ask, with an upward inflection, “You didn’t break my antique vase?”

In a declarative or imperative sentence expressing disbelief, doubt, or surprise, a question mark is acceptable: “This is what it has come to?” However, an exclamation point can preempt a question mark in an emotionally expressed question: “How do you know that!”

Indirect questions, like “I wondered what she was talking about,” should not end with a question mark. Likewise, an exclamation that superficially appears to be a question — for example, “Was she ever surprised!” — is just that: an exclamation.

Question marks should not follow questions that are disguised requests: “Could you please close the door on your way out.” (In writing, such requests are best rendered more concisely: “Please close the door on your way out.”)

Five “Not This . . . But That” Parallelism Problems

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Just as “not only . . . but also” constructions often stymie writers , similar syntactical phrasing can be difficult to form correctly.

1. “The movie achieves its effects, not by threatening to show you something hideous, but by getting under your skin and into your head.”
This sentence constructs the comparative phrases (“not by [this] but by [that]”) correctly, but the internal punctuation is superfluous: “The movie achieves its effects not by threatening to show you something hideous but by getting under your skin and into your head.”

2. “I caution her not to rely so heavily on what she thinks others would do, but on her own intuition.”
Because the verb rely applies to both comparative phrases, as achieves does in the first example, both the phrase beginning with not and the one beginning with but should follow the verb; the phrase describing the recommended strategy should also be revised to more thoroughly parallel the description of the person’s original approach: “I caution her to rely not so heavily on what she thinks others would do but to depend, rather, on her intuition.”

3. “He films it in a way that doesn’t suggest good taste, but colossal presumption and delusion.”
This sentence has the same error of parallelism as the preceding one; the verb suggest should precede both the not phrase (here, its beginning is disguised as doesn’t) and the but phrase: “He films it in a way that suggests not good taste but colossal presumption and delusion.”

4. “But the story here is not one of privacy infringement so much as the way real estate is changing because of technology.”
The comparative phrasing here is incomplete; a repetition of is within a mirroring verb phrase must be inserted before the concluding phrase: “But the story here is not one of privacy infringement so much as it is the way real estate is changing because of technology.”

5. “They accomplished this task both by utilizing the built-in transformation tools and creating their own.”
Both is correctly positioned only if by is repeated before the verb in the second part of the compound phrase: “They accomplished this task both by utilizing the built-in transformation tools and by creating their own.” Otherwise, both should switch places with by: “They accomplished this task by both utilizing the built-in transformation tools and creating their own.”

Five Compound-Word Corrections

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1. “Eating McDonald’s food everyday for four weeks turned this filmmaker into a bloated, depressed wreck.”
Everyday is an adjective (“It’s not an everyday occurrence”). “Every day” is a phrase consisting of an adjective and a noun (“That’s not something you see every day”). In this sentence, the usage is adjective-plus-noun: “Eating McDonald’s food every day for four weeks turned this filmmaker into a bloated, depressed wreck.”

2. “Seen as both godsend and a major let down, it remains the city’s artistic center.”
“Let down,” consisting of a verb and an adverb, is employed in such sentences as “He was let down.” As a closed compound, it’s a noun: “That’s a real letdown.” In this sentence, it should be in noun form: “Seen as both godsend and a major letdown, it remains the city’s artistic center.”

3. “Resistance from the state legislature could doom the governor-elect’s promise to rollback the hike.”
A rollback is a thing (“The rollback proposal failed in committee”); to roll back is to perform an action (“The state will roll back the price hike”). This sentence refers to an action, not a thing, so the compound must be changed to a verb phrase: “Resistance from the state legislature could doom the governor-elect’s promise to roll back the hike.”

4. “California gave a record $100 million loan to bailout schools.”
As in the previous example, what is in context an action is styled as a noun. The sentence should read, “California gave a record $100 million loan to bail out schools.” Better yet, close the sentence with the preposition: “California gave a record $100 million loan to bail schools out.”

5. “International organizations continue their pull out as rebels attack a train.”
If the sentence read that the organizations continued to pull out, the two-word verb phrase would be correct. But pulling out is an action, so it’s a pullout: “International organizations continue their pullout as rebels attack a train.”

Five Answers to Questions About Direct Address

 

1. I want to tell athletes at my school, where the mascot is a wildcat, to be proud of their team’s accomplishment. Should I write, “Be proud Wildcats” or “Be proud, Wildcats”? I see things like this written all the time without a comma, but something tells me I should include one.

You’re right. Both exhortations are correct, but if you write, “Be proud Wildcats,” you’re telling your readers to be proud Wildcats. “Be proud, Wildcats” is addressed directly to the athletes; you’re telling the Wildcats to be proud. It’s a subtle difference, but the version with the comma conveys the meaning you want.

Also, when pondering whether to write something the way you see it all the time, consider the source: Direct address shows up a lot in informal, conversational (and frequently careless) writing such as email messages and written notes, but in published form, a comma generally (and correctly) separates the term of address from the statement.

2. One issue that comes up in my email communication is the situation in which I am addressing a known group of families, ladies, parents, or students. If I begin my email with “Hello, Ladies,” should “Ladies” be capitalized?

According to The Gregg Reference Manual, in the salutation of a letter (or an email message) — a form of direct address — capitalize the first word and all nouns.

3. When should familial terms like mom be capitalized?

Capitalize mom and related words when the term is a form of direct address substituting for a name: You’re asking, “Can I go see a movie, Mom?” just as you would ask, “Can I go see a movie, Jane?”

When you speak of your mother to another person, substituting mom for her name, the word, for the same reason, is capitalized: Compare “I asked Mom if I could go see a movie” and “I asked Jane if I could go see a movie.”

But if you precede mom with a pronoun, it is a generic noun, equivalent to a designation for any other person: “I asked my mom if I could go see a movie” is equivalent to “I asked my dentist if I could go see a movie.”

4. Why is the word miss not capitalized in your example “Please, miss, can you tell me the time?”

The capitalization system for addressing people by a term other than a name is confusing. The first letters of words for job and familial titles are capitalized, but titles of respect like sir and miss, as well as terms of endearment (such as dear), are styled entirely in lowercase letters.

5. In “Your majesty, his imperial highness summons the prince to the Command Council Tent,” should I change his to His?

Yes, but you shouldn’t uppercase only the first letter of his. Both “your majesty” and “his imperial highness” are used as titles; thus, all those words should be initially capitalized: “Your Majesty, His Imperial Highness summons the prince to the Command Council’s tent.”

Technically, because “his imperial highness” is in the third person, it should not be initial-capped unless it precedes the person’s name, but such courtesies for monarchs are often excepted from this rule.

(Also, if there is an official body called the Command Council, by all means capitalize its name. However, although you would capitalize room or chamber, for example, if there were a designated space for it to meet, because of a tent’s ephemeral nature, I don’t think tent merits the same treatment. Note that in the reference to the Command Council, I’ve made that body’s name possessive.)

Three Cases of Extraneous Hyphens

Writers, even professionals, have a difficult time with hyphens, frequently perplexed about whether to use one — or, worse, blithely certain they’re inserting or omitting a hyphen correctly when doing so is wrong. Here are some sentences that should be bereft of hyphens.

1. “In the city’s first cop-killing since 1935, a detective was found shot at a residence.”

There’s no reason to link the adjectival use of cop with the noun killing, unless killing is joining cop as a phrasal adjective, as in “The suspect is a cop-killing menace.” The correct usage is “In the city’s first cop killing since 1935, a detective was found shot at a residence.”

2. “A privately-built spacecraft will try a second flight in an effort to secure the prize.”

Writers frequently confuse adverbs ending in -ly, which are never connected to the verbs they modify, with adjectives, which are usually hyphenated in phrases like the one referred to in the previous item. Complicating the matter is that adjectival phrases including an adjective ending in -ly, such as grandfatherly-looking in “a grandfatherly-looking fellow,” are hyphenated before (and after) a noun.

The difference in these usages is that privately describes how the spacecraft was built; privately modifies built. In “grandfatherly-looking fellow,” however, the first two words are hyphenated to indicate that together, they modify fellow. The sentence should read, “A privately built spacecraft will try a second flight in an effort to secure the prize.”

3. “They prefer to dump the label for a more-effective brand.”

When a comparative or superlative modifier — less or least, or more or most — modifies an adjective, do not connect the terms with a hyphen: “They prefer to dump the label for a more effective brand.” (If the sentence is ambiguous without the hyphen, as in “The team had several more successful seasons,” revise the sentence according to the intended meaning: “The team had several seasons that were more successful” or “The team had several successful seasons after that.”)

“Avenge” vs. “Revenge”

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What’s the difference between avenge and revenge? They can be used interchangeably as verbs, though avenge is more common and revenge is used more often as a noun.

Both avenge and revenge, which share the Anglo-French root venger, meaning “to avenge” (ultimately from Latin vindicare, whence also vindicate and vindication), mean “to take vengeance, to retaliate for a wrong.” (The former is slightly more exalted in tone than the latter, implying righteous retribution rather than mere payback.) Unlike revenge, however, avenge is not used in noun form to mean “vengeance, retaliation.” In addition, one who avenges is an avenger, but there is no parallel form based on revenge.

Venge, an obsolete variant, is the basis of the noun vengeance, which has a literal meaning nearly synonymous with revenge (as with avenge and the verb revenge, vengeance has a more elevated connotation than the noun revenge), but in the idiomatic phrase “with a vengeance,” it means “excessively” or “vehemently.” The adjective vengeful (and the adverb vengefully and the noun vengefulness, meaning “the quality of feeling vengeful”) also stems from the archaic form.

One can also be said to be revengeful, and to act revengefully or to feel revengefulness, but these are needless variants of the simpler forms described above.

15 Names and Descriptions of Effects

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We’ve all heard about one behavioral or scientific effect or another, but perhaps we’re not sure we’re getting the name right, or even that we mean the one we think we do when we name it. Here are the labels of the most ubiquitous of effects and the thesis or the scientific principle underlying each one.

1. Bambi effect: Animals widely perceived as visually appealing will be given more consideration or sympathy than those deemed less attractive. (A rare additional connotation refers to homosexual men who engage in heterosexual behavior.)

2. Butterfly effect: A seemingly inconsequential event or incident can have momentous consequences.

3. Domino effect: Each in a series of events or incidents causes the subsequent phenomena.

4. Doppler effect: A wave’s frequency changes in relation to the relative position of the source or the observer.

5. Greenhouse effect: Heat emanating from a planetary surface will be absorbed and redistributed by atmospheric gases back to the surface or into the atmosphere, resulting in an increase in temperature.

6. Halo effect: The more attractive or appealing a person or other entity is, the more favorably they will be evaluated or the more sympathetically they will be treated.

7. Hawthorne effect: People being observed as part of a study will perform better or otherwise as expected simply because they know they are being studied.

8. Hundredth-monkey effect: A thought or behavior is widely and suddenly distributed through a group once a critical number of members of that group are exposed to the thought or behavior. (This theory is basically valid, but the claim of instantaneous transmission has been discredited.)

9. Mozart effect: Listening to music composed by Mozart temporarily improves performance on mental tasks. (This theory has been distorted to suggest that doing so makes the listener smarter; furthermore, additional studies have concluded that the specific composer or music genre, or whether one listens specifically to music at all, is irrelevant; experiencing anything one enjoys may improve performance.)

10. Placebo effect: Patients given secretly ineffectual or simulated treatment will perceive that their condition has improved, or that it will improve, because they believe the treatment has benefited or will benefit them.

11. Pygmalion effect: The more that is expected of people, the better they will perform.

12. Ripple effect: A single incident or occurrence may have consequences and ramifications beyond the scope of the original phenomenon.

13. Snowball effect: See “ripple effect.”

14. Streisand effect: Attempts to censor or conceal information lead to increased publicity.

15. Trickle-down effect: A consumer item may initially be affordable only for the affluent, but its price will likely decrease until people of more modest means can afford it (at which time it often becomes less attractive to wealthier people).

Answers to Questions About Tense

A reader submitted three queries about which verb forms to use to indicate various tenses. Here are the questions and my responses.

1. When do you use have with another verb, and when do you omit it? (For example, “I have said yesterday . . .” vs. “I said yesterday . . . .”) When do you use had? (“I had said yesterday . . . .”)

“I have said yesterday . . .” is erroneous. Use have in this type of construction only when you want to emphasize that the action occurred at an unspecified time: “I have said that I would support the policy.” (This form is called the present perfect tense.) Use had for the past perfect tense, when you want to indicate that something happened before a previous occurrence or a previous time: “I had said that I would support the policy, but that was before I realized it is unfair.”

2. When should I use would as in “I would want to eat there,” as opposed to “I want to eat there”? What is the difference?

“I would want to eat there” implies or precedes a condition: “I would want to eat there if it weren’t so expensive.” “I want to eat there,” by contrast, expresses a simple desire.

3. What’s the difference between “If I can, then I will” and “If I could, then I would”?

“If I can, then I will” expresses a simple desire to accommodate. “If I could, then I would” implies that, because of a condition that is unnamed or not yet named, one is unable to accommodate.

A Gerund Is a Verb and a Noun in One

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A gerund is a verb that also functions as a noun. For example, one can say one is engaged in the act of writing, but one can also say that what one is doing is a thing called writing. A gerund can be part of the subject of a sentence (“Writing takes a lot of effort”) or part of the object (“I’ve done a lot of writing”).

Most writers generally employ gerunds without difficulty, but one aspect of their use can be confusing: the genitive case.

In the genitive case, the pronoun associated with the gerund takes a different form than it would when associated with the same word used as a verb. For example, when expressing that you listened to some people talking, you would write, “I heard them talking.” However, if you are emphasizing talking as a thing rather than an action, you would write, “I heard their talking.” Or, consider the difference between “They heard it breaking” (breaking is a verb) and “They heard its breaking” (breaking is a gerund).

Writers should also make a distinction with possessive forms of nouns: “The girl shouting awakened her parents” uses shouting as a verb (girl is the subject); in “The girl’s shouting awakened her parents,” however, shouting is a gerund (and shouting, not girl, is the subject).

In many instances, the difference in connotation is insignificant, but whether one employs a simple verb or uses it as a gerund can change the sense of the sentence.

The Right Prepositions for Geographical Designations

The idiomatic idiosyncrasies among references to one’s relationship to geographical or topographical features make selecting the correct preposition a challenge for nonnative speakers, but even those born to English can stumble. This post discusses various classes of phrasing about location.

On lives in a town or city, county, state, or nation but on a continent. One writes of one’s residence in a neighborhood or district, but a reference to a side of a city (Chicago’s North Side or New York City’s East Side, for example) is oriented with on. If one lives virtually or literally in the shadow of an imposing natural or artificial edifice, however, one might say that one lives beneath Telegraph Hill or works under the Gateway Arch. If one is referring to some point past one’s current location or another reference point, one might say that the place in question is, for example, below Broadway, even though no change in altitude is involved.

In topographical contexts, the preposition depends on the position: One lives in the foothills or in the mountains, even though, presumably, one is not a cave dweller, or in a canyon or valley. But one lives, or stands, on the hillside or mountainside — or on the hilltop or the mountaintop — or on the valley floor. These distinctions apply to proper names, too: One vacations in the Catskills or backpacks in the Rockies, but one stands on Spyglass Hill (though one can either hike on or up it).

One drives on or along a street, road, or highway, but one takes a turn at an intersection or exits at (or onto) an off-ramp.

“In the sea” and “under the sea” refer to being or traveling beneath the surface of the ocean. However, on, just as on land, is the correct preposition for references to surface travel, though one might also refer to coursing along or over a sea route. One also moves on, along, or over a lake or another body of water, although on also applies to one’s position in reference to a coast, shoreline, or bank, as when visiting friends who live on the ocean, staying at a campsite on a lake, or having a house on a river.

How to Style Profanity

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Some time ago, I wrote about the suitability of profanity in prose. My conclusion was that, depending on the context, it’s up to the producer to decide whether to publish profanity and the reader whether to accept or reject it. But if you, the producer, decide to allow profanity, know that there are degrees of deployment.

The simplest approach, of course, is to treat profane and obscene words and phrases just like any other. As I mentioned earlier, many people (myself included) find humor in judiciously employed cussing intended to evoke amusement, and nothing beats a string of expletives to convey passion of one kind or another.

Understandably, however, this acceptance is not universal, and publishers must be sensitive to their readership. General-interest magazines and websites and the like, especially those with paid subscriptions and/or with a reputation to establish or uphold, are unlikely to allow such terms to parade across the page or the screen like rowdy revelers.

Publications with niche audiences consisting of people who unabashedly use profanity in speech and writing, and hear it without flinching, are going to have a more relaxed attitude about provocative language. But what if yours doesn’t belong in that category? You, and your writers, can refrain from including profanity in your narrative, but what about reporting what another party wrote or said when the statement includes naughty words?

In lighthearted contexts, writers and editors can bowdlerize comments with euphemistically droll descriptions along the lines of “Smith suggested that Jones engage in an anatomically impossible activity” or “She spoke, to say the least, in a manner inconsistent with what one would expect of a person standing among blue-haired ladies in the lobby of a church immediately after the service.” Coy references to utterances of “expletives” or “invective,” or to “colorful language,” also get the point across.

But if one would rather tiptoe closer to verisimilitude, one might print a word with a nonalphabetical character in place of one or more letters, as many people do to circumvent profanity filters in the commenting function on websites. (Sh!t, for example, provides an orthographical fig leaf and additional emphasis in one stroke.) Some publications have a more restrictive policy: Print the first letter only, followed by a dash (or two hyphens) or a couple of asterisks: s–, or s**. (The paired characters collectively represent, rather than correspond one to one to, the missing letters.)

One might also employ what has been variously labeled a grawlix (the term was coined, among other similarly jocular vocabulary, by comics cartoonist Mort Walker) and an obscenicon (the creation of Language Log blogger Benjamin Zimmer). However, an ostentatious representation like @#&*! — this approach is said to have been invented by Rudolph Dirks, the creator of the pioneering comic strip The Katzenjammer Kids — is best reserved solely for humorous use; alternatively, in a feature article or a column, a writer might simply refer to an f-bomb or the s-word rather than apply the news section’s substitution policy.

Another necessary component of a publication’s rules about the use of profanity and obscenity is a word list that explicitly draws the line: Which words (like mild oaths) are acceptable in print, and which (sexual and scatological terms, for example) are not?

Six Forms of the Subjunctive Mood

Are you in a subjunctive mood? Then you should frame sentences in one of the six following forms.

The subjunctive mood is used in cases in which what is expressed is not necessarily real, as opposed to the indicative case, which is applied to factual statements. The key difference is a change in the form of a given verb: Am or was is supplanted by were, be takes the place of are, or singular active verbs lose their -s or -es endings. In conversation, it is common for speakers to fail to distinguish between the moods, but in careful writing, the distinction must be made.

1. Counterfactual
In this subjunctive construction, the writer expresses a notion contrary to fact, such as “If I were you, I’d return it to the store.”

2. Imperative
In this class of the subjunctive mood, commands and demands are expressed: “I demanded that she walk away.”

3. Necessity
This subjunctive form refers to requirement: “It is necessary that she fill out the form first.”

4. Proposition
This category applies to proposals and suggestions: “We proposed that they reconsider the offer.”

5. Supposition
In this form, the writer expresses a possibility: “If I were to accept the position, I’d have to relocate.”

6. Wish
This type of subjunctive form deals with expressions of desire: “I wish that I were able to go back and do it over again.”

The subjunctive case also survives in such idiomatic phrases as “as it were,” “be that as it may,” “be they [one thing or another],” and “would that it were.”

5 Cases for Requiring a Comma Before a Sentence Tag

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A sentence tag is a word or phrase added to the beginning or end of a statement for emphasis or to provide more information. For the following sentences, I discuss the necessity of preceding end-of-sentence tags with a comma.

1. “I shouldn’t have been surprised really.”

Without a comma separating really from the rest of the sentence, the implication is that really is an adverb modifying how the writer should not have been surprised (really, as in factually, and the opposite of allegedly). However, its function is merely to emphasize the point: “I shouldn’t have been surprised, really.”

2. “I was in the other room at the time actually.”

This sentence indicates that the writer was in the other room in an actual manner, rather than figuratively, but that’s not the literal meaning. The writer has been challenged about his or her location when an incident occurred, and the intent, again, is to emphasize. A comma is required before actually to signal this distinction: “I was in the other room at the time, actually.”

The idea could also be conveyed with actually inserted elsewhere in the sentence (in descending order of elegance): “Actually, I was in the other room at the time” or “I was, actually, in the other room at the time” or “I was in the other room, actually, at the time.” (Note that not all adverbial tags are so flexible about location; try these variations in the first example, and you’ll see that really seems to feel right only as a concluding tag.)

3. “We did it all right.”

This sentence implies that the writer is evaluating a merely competent performance. With a comma inserted before “all right,” the implication is of emphasis on the fact of the accomplishment: “We did it, all right.”

4. “They offered a free pass to boot.”

Without a comma preceding “to boot” (which means “as a bonus”), the phrase appears to describe an action that is, thanks to the pass, complimentary. The comma signals that “to boot” is an appendage that idiomatically offers additional information: “They offered a free pass, to boot.”

5. “Geology has an impact on biology and vice versa.”

As written, this sentence seems to equate biology and vice versa as two things geology has an impact on. But “vice versa,” meaning “the opposite,” applies to the entire sentence preceding it, so it must be set off from the sentence: “Geology has an impact on biology, and vice versa.”