0

I am working on my 'Statement of Purpose' for my grad school application. It seems that correct punctuation is very critical. So I have a question about the comma punctuation in the following sentence

Since the time I have come across the powerful and intelligent tools like face and speech recognition, machine translation[,] I have been fascinated about exploring the field of 'Artificial intelligence' and 'Algorithm design'.

Is the comma in [] after 'machine translation' correct? What I want is that, I want the comma to end the previous series of examples and add a new independent phrase, but I feel like there is a possible interpretation of understanding the phrase 'I have been fascinated about ..' as another example of the ongoing series, i.e., interpreting it as tool rather than independent clause.

What is the correct comma use here?

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    Have you considered posting this on a site like Lang-8? You're welcome to post here, of course, but I think several small changes would improve your sentence, and Lang-8 is a good place to ask people what those changes should be. For example, I'd personally write "Since I first came across" rather than "Since the time I have come across", and I'd write "fascinated with the idea of" rather than "fascinated about".
    – user230
    Nov 3, 2013 at 1:50

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

I agree with snailboat that you might benefit from getting help with your sentence on a site like Lang-8. But to answer your question: The comma you are asking about is correct; it's the part before that comma that needs work. You need to link your two examples with "and": "face and speech recognition and machine translation" and then your comma works just fine:

Since the time I have come across the powerful and intelligent tools like face and speech recognition and machine translation, I have been fascinated about exploring the field of 'Artificial intelligence' and 'Algorithm design'.

Again, I agree with snailboat about the phrase "Since that time."

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .