Context: "Nadine has so much confidence in her gift that she says the award is hers(,) and she claims to own the title, even before the contest has started.
Should there be a comma here? I am not to rephrase the sentence, unfortunately.
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Yes. Coordinating conjunctions plus commas are used to join independent clauses like this.– FeliniusRex - goneMay 5, 2021 at 13:29
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@FeliniusRex Even though the "she claims to own the title" part refers to "Nadine has so much confidence in her gift that"?– Diane MikMay 5, 2021 at 13:37
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1 Answer
If the comma after "title" is kept, you need to have a comma after "hers." This sets up a parenthetical clause:
Nadine has so much confidence in her gift that she says the award is hers (and she claims to own the title) even before the contest has started.
You may use commas, em–dashes, or parentheses to set off the parenthetical clause, but you need one punctuation mark on each side of it.
If instead the comma was removed:
Nadine has so much confidence in her gift that she says the award is hers and she claims to own the title, even before the contest has started.
That is a yob's comma and would be incorrect.
Note that in the parenthetical version of the sentence, both Nadine saying the award is hers and Nadine claiming to own the title happen before the contest starts. This is strictly accurate, as she is doing both things (saying and claiming). But the idiom to say something is someone's means to lay claim to it in advance, so it would be perfectly natural for her to "say the award is hers" before the contest starts—only "claiming to own the title" (meaning to actually have it in her possession) is unnatural. So I would prefer to keep the comma after "hers" and remove the comma after "title," which gives:
Nadine has so much confidence in her gift that she says the award is hers, and she claims to own the title even before the contest has started.
This sets up two related clauses:
- She says the award is hers, and
- She claims to own the title even before the contest has started.
The emphasis on the timing applies only to her second claim, because it is out-of-the-ordinary for someone to literally claim they own the prize before the event starts. It is perfectly ordinary for them to say, before the event, "The award is mine!" because they are not speaking literally. (Really they are shortening the phrase "The award is as good as mine.")
