Commas around "and"
I'm at a loss as to how I should title this. I have this sentence:
We have the option to provide notifications via telephone, and, possibly, email.
I am trying to express several things:
- We have an option to provide notifications
- We can provide those notifications via telephone
- I think we can provide email notifications (Further research is required, but I believe the audience already has that context. The addition of "possibly" is primarily meant to emphasize the lack of a guarantee).
Would I be better off with this:
We have the option to provide notifications via telephone, and possibly, email.
or this:
We have the option to provide notifications via telephone and, possibly email.
Solution 1:
I would suggest using no commas at all. I think it's cleaner, and not ambiguous:
We have the option to provide notifications via telephone and possibly email.
The other two acceptable choices that you have are (1) a comma right before and, and (2) commas around the possibly. The first choice would make the email option sound further removed from the phone option (try pausing there when saying it aloud):
We have the option to provide notifications via telephone, and possibly email.
The second choice would look like this, and would draw some attention to the word possibly:
We have the option to provide notifications via telephone and, possibly, email.
But all three commas together, though grammatically acceptable, merely comprise clutter (telephone, and, possibly, email) and should be avoided.
Solution 2:
Without possibly, no comma is required: We have the option to provide notifications via telephone and email.
Possibly, when present, forms a weak interruption in the sentence, which can be acknowledged thus: We have the option to provide notifications via telephone and, possibly, email.
Solution 3:
I agree with Daniel, the commas are cluttering up your sentence unnecessarily.
You could consider:
We have the option to provide notifications via telephone and (possibly) email.