No history whatsoever

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Can't see anything wrong with these two sentences myself... the first one you quoted was a bit too much, yes, but not these two IMO.

You're right-- it is a "once you start noticing the first ones, you notice them all" issue-- but both sentences flow much better without the two red superfluous commas. And the same issue crops up over and over. And-- the first sentence could do to have a comma between "sized" and "featureless"

"Everything was repackaged, in variously sized featureless white gelatin capsules, which he was forbidden to open."

"He'd pushed the empty white bubble-pack, with its tiny, precisely handwritten notations of date and hour, in purple ink, far down into the seatback pocket.

[emalvick]

With the first sentence you showed, I think the commas were definitely too much. With the other two, I'm not sure they are too much or they just seem out of place.

Then again, I have always been one that hates having too many commas. It isn't because I think they are wrong. It's just that too may pauses in a sentence mean the sentence could be organized a bit better.

That's also probably a fault of mine since I am a technical writer, and the goal of journal and research papers is to use as few words as possible to say as much as possible.

[bthrowsnaill]

Rogue commas or not, anything by Gibson is a must buy for me!