Another post in my series of writing faux pas
Oh, the power of a misplaced or misused comma to confuse . . .
Imagine our surprise when turning on CNN the other night as my wife and I sat down to dinner. Quickly reading the above on-screen Breaking News textbox, we immediately wondered: "Whoa, had the Mueller investigation halted?" or "Was the comma perhaps a mistake and the investigation has stopped questioning wealthy Russians?"
Turns out neither.
We eventually realized that the correct story was that the Mueller team was detaining targeted, wealthy Russians at airports to question them about possible illegal donations. Oh, ok, when you know that, the text starts to makes sense. But that's backwards as to the purpose of the textboxes. On CNN, those boxes are meant to quickly provide the viewer an idea of what's being presently discussed.
All that had been needed was to put an "and" or an "&" in place of the comma in the Breaking News textbox, and all would have been clear from the git-go.
Yep, proper use and placement of commas IS important.
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