Garcia Knee Deep in Redundant Commas and Adverbs

Re-vote, re-disenfranchise

Florida Democrats struggle with the best way to get screwed over — again.

Published 03.19.08

By Wayne Garcia

You really have to wonder about the Florida Democratic Party with Karen Thurman at the helm.

“Really” is the redundant adverb that Strunk & White inveighs against. It makes the writer sound like a California Valley Girl.

As I watched her being flailed by her own politicians last week when she floated a vote-by-mail scheme, I actually started to feel sorry for the former congresswoman that (gasp!) Florida broke the rules seems an impossible task.

Passive pussyfooting verb: “As I watched her own politicians' flailing her last week…”

“Actually” is another redundant adverb, confirming the California Valley Girl status of Le Garcia.

• The Miami Herald: It's an "absurd idea...a last-ditch, Hail Mary pass that has failure written all over it."

Garcia demonstrates wrong use of ellipsis; what he needs is a comma or a dash. Use an ellipsis for omitted material or to indicate a trailing off of the speaker’s words.

If a re-vote happens, he said, Democrats will take part. But he acknowledges "nobody's really dying for it, either, it seems."

The commas surrounding “either” are redundant. It is a restrictive adverb.

I guess what strikes me most is the apathy I hear about the whole voting mess, as if we are so beaten down in Florida, so used to being the butt of cable news and late-night jokes, that we've lost the will to argue.

The “as if” adverbial clause is restrictive: no comma after “miss” or “jokes.”

We just shrug our shoulders like Jake Gittes' private-eye colleagues in the last scene of Chinatown and say, with resignation, "Forget it, voters. It's Floridatown."

“Just” is a redundant adverb. Dump it. The comma after “say” is superfluous: it cuts off a restrictive adverbial prepositional phrase. “Gittes’” should be “Gittes’s.”

Graham Greene, who would have gotten a Nobel if one of the Nobel Committee members had not had it in for him, eschewed adverbs altogether. Read a page or two of him to see what punch this abstention gives his style.

ldd