• Raykin@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Upvoted but I wish you would have run your post through ChatGPT as well my friend. That was hard to read.

      • Johanno@feddit.de
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        9 months ago

        I could use german grammar to set the commas, but then I would have probably 10 to many for English grammar. So I tend to use less in English.

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          9 months ago

          As a native English speaker, I barely understand comma rules either. The only person I know that I would expect to always get commas right has a Master’s degree in English. The extremely oversimplified rule I was taught as a young child was to add a comma anywhere you would naturally pause while speaking. Doesn’t always work, but it works well enough.

      • verdigris@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        None of those sentences needed commas, they’re just not constructed very clearly.

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          I, as a German, asked an expert on that topic: ChatGPT. According to ChatGPT, there is no genocide if you don’t kill them with the intention to wipe them from the planet. So, if for example you accidentally drop poison into their water because you mixed the botox and sugar bottle at the water station, then even if they all die it is not a genocide.

          And since ChatGPT is infallible, this is the only truth.

          Six commas, colon, capitalization, word order, word choice, “infallible”. Infallible like my editing 🤓 & dunt u disagreeme

          PS: I speak zero languages (rounded), good job all who learn English and attempt to use it

          • verdigris@lemmy.ml
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            9 months ago

            Okay, yes, those are all valid places to put commas, good job – except for the one after “So”, which actually decreases the legibility. It would be better to surround “for example” with commas.

            However, none of them are grammatically necessary. The original comment is totally fine and can be parsed unambiguously as-is. I would support the colon insertion above any of your commas.

            • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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              9 months ago

              Good point!

              Interesting, anywhere I can read about grammatically necessary vs. recommended yet unnecessary commas? (Perhaps on the first search result for that question heh)

              • verdigris@lemmy.ml
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                9 months ago

                This is a decent article, at least for the most part: I actually don’t like their examples for the “Preposition of Time” stuff at all, the versions with commas are just bad writing.

                But basically it just comes down to whether the sentence/clause can be parsed unambiguously without the commas. There is no syntactical difference between “I as a German asked…” and “I, as a German, asked…”. It’s entirely a style choice.