Grammatical question

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Philabuster
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Grammatical question

Post by Philabuster » July 10th, 2014, 8:16 pm

In my blurb…

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Martin lost five thousand dollars, his job, and his girlfriend all in the same bet. She left him standing alone on the casino floor; his will to live left with her.

A bachelor party and a crass waitress named Janice stall his suicidal plan long enough for him to watch everybody else's world spiral out of control.

The night deals a hand where murder, robbery, and all-around mayhem are in the cards, and with it a path to redemption for Martin as he gambles with more than just money at The Reverie Casino.
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…I've been told that the last paragraph shouldn't have the second comma. I was told the reasoning is because there are two "and"s in the sentence and only one should have the comma before it. Is this true?

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polymath
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Re: Grammatical question

Post by polymath » July 10th, 2014, 10:17 pm

Philabuster wrote: The night deals a hand where murder, robbery, and all-around mayhem are in the cards, and with it a path to redemption for Martin as he gambles with more than just money at The Reverie Casino.
---

…I've been told that the last paragraph shouldn't have the second comma. I was told the reasoning is because there are two "and"s in the sentence and only one should have the comma before it. Is this true?
The sentence is a complex sentence. Three ideas, two subordinate ideas and one main idea. The second "and" makes no difference in punctuation for this case, illustrated by testing the sentence without that "and;" however, other grammar faults arise. What is the main idea? Redemption is set up as the main idea mingled among multiple conjunction and preposition clauses, the main idea lacking its due emphasis thereby. The main idea of substance, however, is Martin gambles more than money.

"The night deals a hand where [coordination conjunction] murder, robbery, and [serial list coordination conjunction] all-around mayhem are in the cards, and [nonessential coordination conjunction] with [preposition used as coordination conjunction] it (vague pronoun subject antecedent) a path to redemption for Martin as [coordination conjunction used as a subordination conjunction] he gambles with [preposition used as coordination conjunction] more than just money at The Reverie Casino."

Recast for clarity, strength, and prescriptively proper grammar to illustrate.
//The night deals a hand of murder, robbery, and all-around mayhem in the cards; with the troubles, a path toward Martin's redemption--while he gambles more than money at The Reverie Casino.//
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Philabuster
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Re: Grammatical question

Post by Philabuster » July 10th, 2014, 10:41 pm

As always polymath, thank you dearly.

Littlecupofjess
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Re: Grammatical question

Post by Littlecupofjess » August 21st, 2015, 1:20 pm

I don't know if the following would be grammatically correct, but it wouldn't sound bad as:

The night deals a hand where murder, robbery, and all-around mayhem are in the cards. With it comes a path to redemption for Martin as he gambles with more than just money at The Reverie Casino.

This way there is more of a focus on the "he gambles with more than just money", which is the line that hooked me. I immediately started thinking what the heck is he gambling with? :)

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