In Avatar (2009), Jake recording his vlog:
Jake: Okay, location, shack, and the days are starting to blur together.
why comma before "shack" needed?
-
2The comma is there because Jake pauses in between saying location and shack. But it could have been written differently. For example, "Okay. Location: shack. And the days are starting to blur together".– FumbleFingersJun 5 at 16:25
-
1We always put commas between items in a list. "I need to buy juice, flour, eggs, and milk." The one before and is optional, but the others are mandatory.– stangdonJun 5 at 18:26
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
Jake is not talking in complete sentences. He is saying words with very little syntactic connections
Okay (this is just filler while he thinks of what to say next)
Location (He has reduced "My location is..." to just one word.)
Shack (We have to assume the person watching this will have enough context to understand what "shack" means. Without context this doesn't tell you what his location is.)
Note that there is no verb. The listener is has to fill in the missing syntax.
It is as if he is reading a column from a table
| Location |
|---|
| Shack |
The commas help the reader to understand that these are isolated words, and aren't part of a flowing sentence.
-
This makes the text an interesting example of how to write incorrect English - a very important topic when transcribing the spoken language. Jun 5 at 22:15