Punctuated correctly?

Question

"He told us that if we made it to the top of the mountain in one piece, we would be promoted and that if we didn't, we would be fired."

"He said that if the weather was nice, we could go to the park but that if it wasn't, we could go to the ice-cream parlor instead."

Clive · Accepted Answer

I'd do it thus.

"He told us that if we made it to the top of the mountain in one piece we would be promoted, and that if we didn't we would be fired."

"He said that if the weather was nice we could go to the park, but that if it wasn't we could go to the ice-cream parlor instead."

JJDouglas · Answer

Thank you for the reply.

I did consider your version but got confused by two things:

The sentence contains conditional clauses, which should normally be followed by commas ("If we didn't, we would be fired"). Is there a particular reason why the sentence doesn't need to be punctuated like regular conditional clauses?

Also, is the sentence a compound predicate (with the subject "he")? That's why I decided to forgo the comma before "and" in the first and "but" in the second. Again, is there a particular reason there should be a comma used?

Clive · Answer

Let me say that my second choice would be
"He told us that, if we made it to the top of the mountain in one piece, we would be promoted and that, if we didn't, we would be fired."
This treats the conditional clauses as parenthetical, which is what the single comma accomplishes when the clause is at the start of a sentence.
I agree about the compound predicate, but I added the comma before 'but/and' in my first version to improve the readability of such a long sentence. I removed it from my second version because that would be too many commas.
My feeling is that in modern English the trend is away from having a lot of commas.

My general approach to commas is to try to relate them to where i would pause in speaking. I know that some here may well disagree with me, perhaps including you, but I think that is a useful guideline. Consider that we can understand quite long and complex sentences when they are said to us and we are thus unable to see any commas.

I find my first version readily understandable when I read it and also when I say it. Don't you?

Should I duck before I read your reply?

JJDouglas · Answer

No, there's no need to duck

I do agree that your first choice reads fine and makes sense. My only problem with it is that it contradicts the rules that I've previously mentioned.

I think my problem with punctuation in general is that I'm the type of person who prefers things to be black and white. Once I learn the rules, I do my best to studiously follow them, which is how I ended up with my original choice of punctuation. But it appears that sometimes it's best to ignore the rules and that the rules can contradict themselves. Because there is occasionally no clear answer, I can spend ages deliberating over the best way to punctuate a sentence (the biggest source of confusion for me always tends to be commas).

But that's my own pedantic problem. Thank you for your advice.

Punctuated correctly?

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