Re: Tony Cooper's downhill slide

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:27:19 GMT, Tony Cooper
<tony_cooper213@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

> On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:53:44 +0100, Charles Riggs <chriggs@xxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:

> >Much as Golding speculated, in _Free Fall_, about Samuel Mountjoy's
> >fall into depravity, a similar question must be asked about our own
> >Coop:

[...]

> To drag you, Chuck, kicking and screaming into the area of topicality,
> why on earth did you put a comma after "speculated"?

So now we know that Cooper doesn't understand how to
punctuate a parenthetical remark.

Cooper is beyond help, but in case there are others who
don't know, "in 'Free Fall'" is a parenthetical remark.
There are three well-known ways to punctuate it:

Much as Golding speculated, in _Free Fall_, about
Samuel Mountjoy's fall into depravity,

Much as Golding speculated (in _Free Fall_) about
Samuel Mountjoy's fall into depravity,

Much as Golding speculated -- in _Free Fall_ --
about Samuel Mountjoy's fall into depravity,

I, for one, prefer the first way, the one Charles chose.

.