Why can't we use commas in this sentence before "and"?

Question

I'm helping a student with writing a story in English. She wrote the following sentence.

"She stopped to take a picture of a little yellow duck, which someone (probably a child) had drawn with colored chalk on the side of the building, and then noticed a little white flower that grew through the little crack in the asphalt, and took its picture too."

According to Grammarly, in this sentence, we need to remove the last two commas. Is there a grammatical reason for this? Is it related to the which clause or listing with "and"?

Hello, Anna. 'Grammarly' isn't programmed to handle trickier cases, and often ends up over-prescriptively (but here the reverse seems the case) applying a rule of thumb. Stylewise, I'd say it sounds a little cluttered, and would use a heavier-duty separator: 'She stopped to take a picture of a little yellow duck, which someone (probably a child) had drawn with colored chalk on the side of the building ... and then she noticed a little white flower that grew through the little crack in the asphalt, and took its picture too.' ... — Edwin Ashworth, Nov 29 '22 at 15:30
Does this answer your question? Comma usage with compound sentences {actually compound predicates, as per Rob's answer}. See also Can an independent clause be interrupted by a conjunction without a comma ... and other references to "comma" + "compound sentence" — Edwin Ashworth, Nov 29 '22 at 15:39
@EdwinAshworth Thank you, that really helps! I will look into compound predicates/sentences and recommend the student add separators to make the sentence easier to read. — Anna, Dec 01 '22 at 03:30

Why can't we use commas in this sentence before "and"?

0 Answers0