Comma before "and" with two adjectives paralleled

Question

The following paragraph is an excerpt from the NYT article:

Just don’t call him a dirtbag, Moss-Bachrach pleaded. “I get a little sensitive,” he said. “My feelings get hurt.” He’s made a specialty of stunted men — see also: his cringey musician in “Girls” — but he loves and respects them nonetheless, especially Richie. He’s “passionate, and loyal.”

Why was a comma used before and in the bold phrase?

@HippoSawrUs 'He’s passionate ... and loyal.' would perhaps raise fewer objections. — Edwin Ashworth, Jun 24 '23 at 13:48
@EdwinAshworth - Yes, I championed that cause for many years, that commas are not pauses, but you said we shouldn't follow our school teachers, and here we are. Haha, but maybe we should have. Instead of Instagram or whatever. It's contagious, and morphing. ;-) — HippoSawrUs, Jun 24 '23 at 15:50
@HippoSawrUs 'you said we shouldn't follow our school teachers' certainly needs downtoning. We all owe a lot to most of them. I'd include a 'blindly' qualifier. // You might be interested in the answer here: 'comma usages which aren't necessary to police syntax but are still useful'. — Edwin Ashworth, Jun 24 '23 at 18:22
@EdwinAshworth - Interesting, One Woman Shop would've been interesting in the first 5/6ths of my life, had I needed a breath, but now I'm just waiting to pause indefinitely. — HippoSawrUs, Jun 24 '23 at 21:15
@HippoSawrUs One Woman Shop is probably at least as well known as Huddleston & Pullum. — Edwin Ashworth, Jun 25 '23 at 09:54

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 24 '23 at 04:49

2

The comma might be used there to emphasise that the two qualities are separate. In this case the sentence would work more conventionally as

He's passionate, and he's loyal.

Alternatively the comma might be an editing error.

answered Jun 24 '23 at 04:49

Peter

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Can you find supporting references for your first two statements, Peter? – Edwin Ashworth Jun 25 '23 at 09:57
I don't believe using a comma this way is standard syntactic practice. One could clearly emphasise that the quantities are separate by using my example sentence, or one could just drop the comma. Either would be quite grammatical. A pause in speech could be used to separate the qualities, and a comma is still sometimes used to represent this in writing. The ellipsis, as you suggested, would also represent a pause, but perhaps this would be a longer pause than needed in the original. – Peter Jun 25 '23 at 14:21
There aren't good examples of this in this thread, but a good answer on ELU includes reasonable linked and attributed quotes, preferably from recognised authorities. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 25 '23 at 14:29
My original intention was to post my answer as a comment, but that would have made it liable to be deleted as an answer. I am happy to edit my comment into the answer, with a reference to the closed question on natural punctuation. – Peter Jun 25 '23 at 14:38

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 24 '23 at 18:44

2

In quoted speech and dialog, the comma is used to transcribe a slight pause.

Who knows why Moss-Bachrach paused slightly in saying “passionate, and loyal”?

Maybe it was for emphasis, maybe it was for contrast, maybe it was an afterthought.

answered Jun 24 '23 at 18:44

Tinfoil Hat

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MarcInManhattan · Answer 3 · 2023-06-24T05:13:09.860

When a series includes only two conjuncts, the second may be considered parenthetical (nonessential, nondefining, etc.) and, along with the conjunction, surrounded by paired punctuation. (In this case the second comma has been dropped because it would appear adjacent to the sentence's terminal punctuation.) This is a very common feature of English and occurs with second conjuncts that are clauses, various kinds of phrases, individual words, etc.

You may be interested in this old ELU question, which deals with a similar situation, though not at the end of a sentence: Appropriate use of comma with a mid sentence "or..."?

Comma before "and" with two adjectives paralleled

3 Answers3