Talk:Jo Grant

Excessive commas?

I edited the main page eliminating what appeared to be excessive and out of place commas. It could be that it is merely a difference in writing style, either within wikis or in common use. Could somebody compare the two and let me know. I consulted Wikipedia's M.O.S. but did not find any helpfull information.

Much appreaciated, Stillnotginger 22:38, February 18, 2010 (UTC)

No, there aren't

As you requested, I've compared your revision of Jo Grant, in which you claim to have gotten rid of "unnecessary" commas, with the one that came before it. I've found that, by and large, you made the article grammatically less correct. Let's take them one by one:

Original

Despite this initial clumsiness, her failures fueled her enthusiasm, and she became more determined to prove people wrong about her. So much so, that, after recovering from being hypnotised by the Master to kill the Doctor, she disobeyed orders and followed the Doctor to Rossini's Circus, and was able to rescue him.

The problem here isn't overuse of commas. In fact, they're all absolutely in the right place. The problem is that the second "sentence" is actually a fragment. The second sentence needs a subject. Your fixes read like this:

Despite this initial clumsiness her failures fueled her enthusiasm and she became more determined to prove people wrong about her, so much so that after recovering from being hypnotised by the Master to kill the Doctor she disobeyed orders and followed the Doctor to Rossini's Circus and was able to rescue him.

What you've done is combine the whole thing into one long sentence. This is the very definition of a run-on sentence. It needs to be broken up by full stops.

Despite this initial clumsiness, her failures fueled her enthusiasm, and she became more determined to prove people wrong about her. When, for example, she recovered from the Master's hypnosis, she disobeyed orders and followed the Doctor to Rossini's Circus. There, she was able to rescue him.

Notice, though, that I've still kept most of the commas of the original. There should be a comma after the introductory clause beginning with "despite". Prepositional and adverbial phrases which begin a sentence should have a comma to separate them from the subject of the sentence. So: "Instead of this, I chose that", "Notwithstanding your objections, I proceeded", "When she recovered from hypnosis, she disobeyed orders", etc.

Moving on.

Original

Having been hypnotised by the Master once, Jo was able to resist his hypnosis on further encounters by reciting nursery rhymes (DW: Frontier in Space). One such time, she reacted to the hypno-sound by seeing a Drashig, a Mutant and a Sea Devil.

There's nothing wrong with this at all. You removed the commas and made the sentences less clear. There definitely should be a comma after both introductory clauses. It's absolutely critical to the first sentence, though, because it makes the reader wonder where the missing comma should be. The reader might think the sentence should be:

Having been hypnotised by the Master, once Jo was able to resist his hypnosis on further encounters by reciting nursery rhymes.

The reader gets to the end of that sentence, having filled in the comma on his or her own, and realizes it doesn't make sense. So he or she re-reads and gets:

Having been hypnotised by the Master once, Jo was able . . .

And that makes sense. The reason you need a comma there — aside from the fact that "them's the rulez" — is that it prevents other plausible readings from appearing as options to the reader. It nails down your meaning firmly.

Moving on.

Original

Jo claimed to be a qualified agent, but she may have exaggerated about this, in the same way she exaggerated the extent of her A-Levels.

You changed this to:

Jo claimed to be a qualified agent, she may have exaggerated about this in the same way she exaggerated the extent of her A-Levels.

And you're 100% wrong. I see this kinda thing all over the place on this wiki and it drives me, as a former English teacher, insane. You cannot remove the "but" unless you're prepared to stop the sentence and start a new one. "But" is a conjunction which allows you to tie two complete sentences together into one. If you remove a conjunction, you must insert a period — or, in some cases, a semi-colon. A conjunction can never be replaced by a mere comma. Commas separate individual nouns, adjectives, adverbs or dependent clauses; they do not separate two independent clauses. What's an independent clause? Basically, it's a sentence. It has a subject and a verb and could easily be ended by a period — like, "Jo claimed to be a qualified agent" and "she may have exaggerated about this".

Again, then, you have rendered a sentence less correct by your efforts. There are various other places where you've removed the comma following an introductory prepositional/adverbial clause from a sentence, but I won't list all those.

Another little change you made was this:

Original

In fact, she may have been with the Doctor for as much as a year before she even stepped foot into the TARDIS. When she finally did, the Doctor discovered that Jo was not a particularly natural time traveller.

You did this:

In fact, she may have been with the Doctor for as much as a year before she even stepped foot into the TARDIS. When she finally did go inside the Doctor discovered that Jo was not a particularly natural time traveller.

There are a cople of issues here. As before, removing the comma allows for multiple interpretations — especially since you added the words "go inside". It's possible to think the comma should go: "When she finally did go inside the Doctor," until you hit the word "discovered" and realize you need to back up and re-read the sentence. Fact is, there's nothing wrong with the sentences as they originally read. It's perfectly plain what the meaning is supposed to be without adding "go inside" and removing the comma. You've substituted the clear for the slightly ambiguous. Note, however, that there's nothing grammatically wrong with adding "go inside", but it's not particularly economic language. If you did add "go inside", you'd still need a comma to close out the adverbial phrase.

Skipping ahead, past a number of your erroneous removals of conjunctions like "but" and "and", we come across this:

Original

Ironically he had orders for her to go there anyway, so her threats were unnecessary.

which you have reduced to:

Ironically he had orders for her to go there anyway, her threats were unnecessary.

This one tiny removal has completely gutted the sentence of its meaning. You cannot remove linking words like this, because it doesn't leave the reader with any understanding of how the who independent clauses relate to each other. Is one supposed to be the consequence of the other ("therefore", "so", "consequently")? Does one merely happen chronologically after the other ("thereafter")? There are any number of possible relationships between the two clauses, and you've just taken away the one word we needed to parse the sentence correctly.

I could go on, but suffice it to say I'm reverting to a version before you got involved. You've — and I'm not sure there is even a "correct" word for what you've done — "de-copy-edited" this article. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:25, March 2, 2010 (UTC)