Punctuation: But seisms have no known precursors, so they come without warning.

[Ashish1354]

9. Which sentence is correctly punctuated?

(b) But seisms have no known precursors, so they come without warning.

(c) For this reason they continue to kill in some areas at a level usually reserved
for wars and epidemics—the 11,000 dead in northeastern Iran died on
August 31 1968 not in the ancient past.

Please explain what is wrong with b)

[Alan]

Hi,

The whole purpose of punctuation is to organise the groups of words in a sentence so that the meaning is clear and also that the reader can understand where the breaks or pauses are. In sentence (b) there is no need for the comma to indicate a pause. It would be better to insert the word 'and' instead.

Alan
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