Parenthetic Apposition or not?
Please settle a debate for me. Here is the sentence in question:
Excessive, incorrect, use of the word "like" is unbelievably irritating.
The criticism is against the comma following the word "incorrect". The defense was made that it is parenthetical apposition. Wikipedia says that apposition's are "normally noun phrases", is it ever acceptable for them to be non-noun phrases? If so, is this an example of that?
Would you judge this sentence as Poor or Acceptable?
According to Purdue OWL:
- Use commas to separate two or more coordinate adjectives that describe the same noun. Be sure never to add an extra comma between the final adjective and the noun itself or to use commas with non-coordinate adjectives.
Because these are coordinating adjectives this would be technically incorrect.
Excessive is not in apposition to incorrect. For that to be true, excessive would have to be synonymous with incorrect. Excessive here condemns the style, but incorrect condemns the grammar. The first judges the quality of the writing's aesthetics, and the second judges whether the writing follows a set of rules.
Two grammatically correct alternatives are:
Excessive, incorrect use of the word "like" is unbelievably irritating.
Excessive and incorrect use of the word "like" is unbelievably irritating.