Maybe this is the fault of the Times, but why are there so many damn commas in this?
“Unlike the Hüsker Dü bassist, Greg Norton, now thriving as a restaurateur in Minnesota, or the band’s drummer and co-leader, Grant Hart, still scuffling in the Twin Cities, however valiantly Earles praises his negligible solo music, Mould, at 50, remains a modestly prominent musician.”
I’ll bet someone is gonna step in and explain to me why this is a totally wrong decision, BUT, speaking as an editor, I will offer my opinion. That sentence seems fine to me except for the phrase “however valiantly Earles praises his negligible solo music,” which should have been either separated from the rest of the sentence by emdashes or, ideally, enclosed by parentheses. That is to say, I would have punctuated it this way:
“Unlike the Hüsker Dü bassist, Greg Norton, now thriving as a restaurateur in Minnesota, or the band’s drummer and co-leader, Grant Hart, still scuffling in the Twin Cities (however valiantly Earles praises his negligible solo music), Mould, at 50, remains a modestly prominent musician.”
And actually, now that I think of it, I might have used semicolons to replace some of the commas, like this:
“Unlike the Hüsker Dü bassist, Greg Norton, now thriving as a restaurateur in Minnesota; or the band’s drummer and co-leader, Grant Hart, still scuffling in the Twin Cities (however valiantly Earles praises his negligible solo music); Mould, at 50, remains a modestly prominent musician.”
But the latter change doesn’t seem as necessary to me as the former. It’s essential to further separate the “however valiantly…” phrase from the rest of the sentence than merely by commas, or else the reader gets lost in the sentence. Once it’s separated, the sentence is much clearer.
Of course, again, this is all just my opinion. Other editors might think I’m totally wrong.
Also, American journalistic conventions are different from British journalistic conventions. Commas are much more welcome in the US.
I have no problem with long, comma-separated sentences. I do have a problem with ones that require extra effort to parse. The semicolon solution is a good one, but I’d request a rewrite. It would probably be a fight with a writer because it’s clear the writer’s intent is to highlight the obscurity of the first two guys with the announcement of Mould’s prominence in the half dozen words. In the end, though, journalistic writing never calls for sentences that are this annoying to read.
(Source: The New York Times)
