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Reply Sun 15 Feb, 2015 10:57 am
Hey people,

I am German, that is, not a English native speaker.
I wrote the following sentence in my term paper and wonder if i should have used commas after "hegemonial" and "financial"!?

Firstly, the hegemonial financial neoliberal EU governance limits
national budget rights, like for instance in Greece, although it is a core democratic principle that the people can decide on the national budget.

I would appreciate any help!
Thanks in advance,
Regina
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Type: Question • Score: 4 • Views: 927 • Replies: 6
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bobsal u1553115
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Feb, 2015 11:07 am
@Regina31,
Drop the "like" in 'like for instance'.

I'd like to see the preceding sentence.
Regina31
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Feb, 2015 11:16 am
@bobsal u1553115,
Thanks for your help!
The preceeding sentences:
Not least, there is, according to Lenz (ibid.), also a crisis of democracy. She names three instances of this problem. Firstly, the hegemonial financial neoliberal EU governance limits national budget rights, like for instance in Greece, although it is a core democratic principle that the people can decide on the national budget.
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dalehileman
 
  0  
Reply Sun 15 Feb, 2015 11:54 am
@Regina31,
Can be punctuated about 35 different ways depending, Reg, on the exact meaning of each adjective and which modifies which

The general rule is that a comma means "and"; so "hegemonial financial" could imply there are at least two kinds of financing but that we're talking about the hegemonial kind; whereas "hegemonial and financial" might mean there are two kinds of limits

It might require a full page of discussion to analyze just considerations of a compound adjective with the possible use of hyphen instead of "and"

Forgive me Reg but it would take this old fella literally all day to explore each possible punctuation and meaning. Con, here's a job for you
Regina31
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Feb, 2015 12:50 pm
@dalehileman,

I also thought about the matter that those three adjectives modify each other (although I had not been able to put that in words before I read your post Wink ). That is why I set no commas. At least, I would not set commas in this case when I write in German. The problem is that I am never sure if I might mix up German and English rules of grammar. But after reading your post I am quite confident that it is okay this way.
So thank you very much!!!
dalehileman
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Feb, 2015 02:31 pm
@Regina31,
Quote:
So thank you very much!!!
You're quite welcome, Reg

Con, where are you, it's right up your alley
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contrex
 
  1  
Reply Sun 15 Feb, 2015 02:49 pm
@Regina31,
Regina31 wrote:
I wrote the following sentence in my term paper and wonder if i should have used commas after "hegemonial" and "financial"!?

Firstly, the hegemonial financial neoliberal EU governance limits

national budget rights, like for instance in Greece, although it is a core democratic principle that the people can decide on the national budget

In the sentence you wrote, "hegemonial financial neoliberal" is a list of adjectives modifying the noun phrase "EU governance limits". We use commas to separate the elements of a list having more than two items, except for the final pair, joined by a conjunction: "the hegemonial, financial and neoliberal EU governance limits".

More importantly, however, I would rearrange the sentence, because "hegemonial" and "neoliberal" are judgements or expressions of (political) opinion, whereas "financial" is not. Furthermore, the common English phrase is "financial governance". (I work in corporate financial governance): "the hegemonial and neoliberal EU financial governance limits". You could omit the 'and' but there should be no comma.



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