comma before second 'and' [conjunction]: to identify and measure, and

mew 1838

New Member
English
Sorry for the vague title, I am not sure which category this falls under.

Which of these is correct?

While it is harder to identify and measure than IQ or experience, and certainly more difficult to capture on resume, its power cannot be denied.

Or

While it is harder to identify and measure than IQ or experience and certainly more difficult to capture on resume, its power cannot be denied.

Should there be a comma before the second and?
 
  • Commas are the right choice; the sentence would be better with dashes or parenteses (depending on the emphasis).

    While it is harder to identify and measure than IQ or experience--and certainly more difficult to capture on résumé--it's power cannot be denied.

    or

    While it is harder to identify and measure than IQ or experience (and certainly more difficult to capture on résumé), its power cannot be denied.

    I personally like the parenteses
     
    While it is harder to identify and measure than IQ or experience, and certainly more difficult to capture on resume, its power cannot be denied.
    The second comma served a grammatical purpose. The first one does not. However, with all those conjunctions flying around, the comma serves a very useful purpose of increasing the readability. chifladoporlosidiomas is right in saying that parentheses or dashes can be used to set this portion off from the rest of the sentence even more (and correctly avoided the common error of using hyphens instead of dashes). I assume that the apostrophe erroneously introduced into "its" in chifladoporlosidiomas' post was a typo, as it was not repeated in the second sentence.
     
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