Proper use of comma in a sentence

I would like to know if this sentence is right – or are there too many commas?

His father, Sandul, clad in his brown loose-fitting, collarless, ankle-length traditional jalabiya walked through the entrance, followed by his herd of goats, sheep and two cattle.

This seems to have too many commas to me but I may be wrong.


You are asking for an opinion. I have one. It can be neither right nor wrong, but it might be useful.

I do not think that you have too much punctuation. In fact, you might not have enough. I am a believer in the Oxford comma, and, as such, believe that there should be a comma after sheep. I would also add a comma after the word jalabiya to reflect that fact that a speaker of the sentence would likely pause to separate jalabiya from the verb walked. That is, Sandul is walking not the jalabiya that Sandul is wearing. In most cases, reading the material out loud will give you clues as to where the punctuation should appear. So, not too much punctuation.

However, what you might have is the wrong kind of punctuation and the wrong sentence structure.

If I were writing this sentence I might write it as follows:

His father, Sandul — clad in his brown loose-fitting, collarless, ankle-length traditional jalabiya — walked through the entrance, followed by his herd of goats, sheep and two cattle.

I have replaced the two commas bracketing the descriptive phrase with em dashes. If I were to read this sentence out loud, I would pause a bit longer on each em dash than I would on a comma. The em-dash is not used enough. I think of it as a super comma. You could also use parentheses but I suspect that might well be a punctuation too far.

The other choice is to break the sentence into two or more sentences. For example,

His father, Sandul, walked through the entrance. He was clad in his brown loose-fitting, collarless, ankle-length traditional jalabiya. His herd of goats, sheep and two cattle followed.

Not quite the same tone here, but this presentation might serve the story better (or worse) than the other presentations. Your choice as the writer, once you figure out what tone you are striving for.

But, I have to note, the same amount of punctuation.