Independent clause, comma+FANBOYS

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eshh: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 3; Joined: Tue Aug 08, 2017 4:08 am

by eshh » Wed Aug 09, 2017 4:25 am

Hi,

I have a question regarding the use of COMMA+FANBOYS to link independent clauses together. I saw in MG Sentence Correction 6th book the following phrase:
"Sal applied himself in his new job, arriving early every day, skipping lunch regularly, and leaving late every night".

It said that the phrase is correct, but here we are using comma+AND to link a dependent clause ("leaving late every night"), shouldn't it be "Sal applied himself in his new job, arriving early every day, skipping lunch regularly and leaving late every night"?

Thanks a lot.

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Wed Aug 09, 2017 4:25 am

DavidG@VeritasPrep: Legendary Member; Posts: 2663; Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:25 amFollowed by: 128 members; Location: Boston, MA; Thanked: 1153 times; GMAT Score:770

by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Wed Aug 09, 2017 6:45 am

eshh wrote:Hi,

I have a question regarding the use of COMMA+FANBOYS to link independent clauses together. I saw in MG Sentence Correction 6th book the following phrase:
"Sal applied himself in his new job, arriving early every day, skipping lunch regularly, and leaving late every night".

It said that the phrase is correct, but here we are using comma+AND to link a dependent clause ("leaving late every night"), shouldn't it be "Sal applied himself in his new job, arriving early every day, skipping lunch regularly and leaving late every night"?

Thanks a lot.

While the GMAT isn't terribly concerned with the usage of the Oxford comma, whenever it presents a list of three elements, it will include that last comma.

Here, "leaving later every night" isn't a dependent clause, as there's no subject. Rather, it's a participial phrase that modifies "Sal." Because we have three participial modifiers: (arriving, skipping, and leaving) we use a standard x, y, and z construction. If we had only two elements, however, there'd be comma. To summarize: one can write "x-ing, y-ing, and z-ing" or one can write "x-ing and y-ing."

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