while I'm at it

[waider]

From the previously-cited Drummond piece, I find an example of something I've found both increasingly prevalent and increasingly annoying: the Spurious Comma.

I do not want to spend every November, for the rest of my life, trying to breathe new life into a concept, that should have been left alone years ago.

Please tell me why there is a comma after "concept" in the above sentence. Arguably the rest of 'em should go, too, but that one is the biggest offender. This, as I say, appears to be gaining in popularity: the placement of a comma where not only is there no need for one, but the insertion of which messes up the flow of the sentence. Where do people learn this stuff? Is it the same school where they teach misuse of apostrophes?

Comments

[mskala.livejournal.com]

If you changed the comma to a period, you'd end up with something grammatical: "I do not want to spend every November, for the rest of my life, trying to breathe new life into a concept. That should have been left alone years ago."

But that has a different meaning from what the writer probably intended.

[mopti.livejournal.com]

I have a colleague who would have done better:


I do not want, to spend every November, for the rest of my life, trying to breathe, new life, into a concept, that should have been left, alone years ago.

Certainly, his personal grammar requires a comma before "to" and "into", and he usually surrounds a key idea like "new life" with a pair of commas. I may be doing him an injustice by putting on in after "left".

[(Anonymous)]

Bah: "one", even.