For example:half a cup of chopped walnuts
vs
half a cup of walnuts, chopped
These two amounts will be very different. In the first example, you would chop up a bunch of walnuts and from that pile you would measure out half a cup. That's a lot of walnuts.
In the second example, you would measure out a half cup of whole walnuts. Then you'd dump them on the cutting board and chop them up. That's a smaller amount of walnuts.
Punctuation and syntax - something we often ignore when we're rushing to get out an email, blog entry, or memo - totally affect what you're trying to say. If we want our communications to be precise and easy to follow, we have to pay attention to these "small" details. Just this one little comma can make or break the recipe!
(c)2014 Suzann Kale
Tags: punctuation, commas, syntax
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