A few days ago
distressed

are the commas in the right places & does this sound immature?

A third example of how an achievement can be, in reality, a failure, is perfectly portrayed in “Romeo and Juliet,” a play created by William Shakespeare.

Top 6 Answers
A few days ago
Nick

Favorite Answer

You just have one too many commas… this is the best arrangement of this sentence:

A third example of how an apparent achievement can, in reality, be a failure is perfectly portrayed in “Romeo and Juliet,” a play by William Shakespeare.

Check out this great website: http://englishplus.com/grammar/

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A few days ago
lilspeed300
A third example of, how an achievement can be in reality a failure, is perfectly portrayed in “Romeo and Juliet,” a play created by William Shakespeare.

i think this is about right and yea it sounds pretty good

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A few days ago
sarahh_f
A third example of how an achievement can, in reality be a failure is perfectly portrayed in “Romeo and Juliet”, a play by William Shakepeare.
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A few days ago
cgsna
Actually, I think that comma usage is mostly left up to the writer, and where they want to place emphasis, etc., in their sentence. There are no hard and fast rules except in certain cases. For example, I did not have to put a comma after the opening word “actually”, but I wanted to separate the sentence into two distinct thoughts, and it is OK that I did. Now, of course, something like:

“A third, example, of how, and achievement, can be, in reality, a failure…”

Is clearly not “right”, and will only distract your reader. It sounds like William Shatner (Captain Kirk from Star Trek) on drugs 😉

But I think that your comma-usage in the example above is perfectly acceptable, and frankly, is exactly how I would have done it.

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A few days ago
Anonymous
instead of “created”, I would use “written” William Shakspeare didn’t come up with the idea, he just wrote it. Good luck with whatever you doing, and I’m horrible with comma, so I can’t help you there.
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A few days ago
Anonymous
I’m terrible with punctuation too.

I think of it like this:

, 1/2 second

; 1 second

: 2 seconds

. 3 seconds.

I know that’s not right, but I get by on it.

If I were writing your sentence I would write it the same way, I think.

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