I read the following sentence in a book:
In war, leaving a single enemy alive to tell the story allows fear to spread.
Why is there a comma after in war? As I understand it, there is a participial turn, but since it comes after, we should not put a comma. Or am I wrong and this is not a participial turn?
Prepositional phrases that start a sentence are generally ended with a comma. This helps prevent confusion in introducing the subject.
If it were
In war leaving a single enemy alive ...
Would misdirect readers to initially think that "war" is leaving. When you say
In war, leaving a single enemy alive ...
It is clear that the prepositional phrase indicates a situation that applies to the statement, but is not participating as part of the subject.
It’s not due to the participial phrase after the comma; it’s due to the introductory (in this case, prepositional) phrase before the comma.
