Sentence of the Week #15

[From Michelle Yeoman and Barbara Gastel:]

Editing Solution: Last Week’s Sentence

Welcome to the 15th installment in this series. As a reminder, below is Sentence of the Week #14:

Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune disorder usually affects the intestines.

This sentence is missing a comma after an autoimmune disorder. Thus, the corrected version is as follows:

Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune disorder, usually affects the intestines.

The phrase an autoimmune disorder is an appositive. An appositive is a noun (or equivalent) that names or adds information about the noun (or equivalent) that it follows.

If an appositive is nonrestrictive (that is, if it adds information but does not make the subject more specific), it should be both preceded by a comma and followed by a comma.

In our sentence, the phrase an autoimmune disorder is nonrestrictive, as it just adds information about Crohn’s disease. Therefore, it should be surrounded by commas. The problem in our sentence was that although the comma before the appositive was present, the comma after it was missing.

(In contrast, a restrictive appositive, which makes the subject more specific, should not be surrounded by commas. Consider the appositive Ravi in the phrase our colleague Ravi. We have many colleagues; therefore adding the appositive Ravi makes the subject more specific. Hence there are no commas in this example.)

Many authors forget to include the comma at the end of a nonrestrictive appositive. Remember: The commas come in pairs.

And now, onward to this week’s sentence.

Sentence of the Week #15:

The sentence below has 1 definite error:

The book was divided into three discreet sections.

Please correct the error, and submit the corrected sentence and any remarks as a comment on this post. I plan to post and discuss the solution next week.

Do you have a sentence that you would like us to consider using as the Sentence of the Week? Please e-mail submissions to Michelle at msyeoman@gmail.com with the subject line “Sentence of the Week”. Submissions should be your own work—don’t nominate a colleague’s writing :). 

Please also feel free to e-mail suggestions relating to this series.