Help us, Nazis

[Czechs Mex]

There are some grammar experts here, and I have questions about things that I'm pretty sure I'm doing wrong. So here's the first one. Feel free to ask your own. Give rep to people that help you.

Question the first:

I have something called an "ad group". I want to talk about a feature at the level of "ad group". Which is right?

ad-group-level features
ad group-level features

Or something else?

I'm using the first option, and I'm pretty sure that's correct, but I'm not positive. Sorry that the example is kind of nonsensical out of context, but I can't really think of a more general example offhand.

[Czechs Mex]

Re: Help us, Nazis (of grammar)

Question the second: do I need a third comma?

"I find that certain types of vegetables, such as apples and pears, as well as milk impact my sleeping patterns."

[Shard]

Re: Help us, Nazis (of grammar)

Question the second: do I need a second comma?

"I find that certain types of vegetables, such as apples and pears, as well as milk impact my sleeping patterns."

According to this, you'd need commas fore and aft, because you've got a complete idea without the examples of apples and pears.

If you'd said: "I find that vegetables such as pears and apples, as well as milk impact my sleeping patterns." Then you wouldn't need the first comma, but the second one should be there regardless.



Edit: For the first question, I don't have any citations, but my gut says it would be ad group-level features. If I substitute federal agency for ad group, I can't picture myself ever writing federal-agency-level features. I think "ad" is an adjective for "group" just as "federal" is for "agency".

[Czechs Mex]

Re: Help us, Nazis (of grammar)

Sorry, what I meant was, do I need a THIRD comma? I was thinking after milk, but now I'm thinking that's not necessary. :O

[Shard]

Re: Help us, Nazis

Oh. In that case, I think "as well as milk" is operating as a prepositional phrase and you'd need a comma after it.

Reads very awkward though.

[American Hero]

Re: Help us, Nazis

A recent thread here has me asking myself is it:

Might as well be.

Or

Mind as well be.

Have I been doing it wrong all my life?

[peachy]

Re: Help us, Nazis

ad group-level

""I find that certain types of vegetables, such as apples and pears, as well as milk impact my sleeping patterns." "

It's easiest if you just break your sentence down to try and see what you are saying. Since you are looking at the second part of the sentence, you can disregard "I find" for right now, so you are left with "Certain types of vegetables, such as apples and pears, as well as milk impact my sleeping patterns".

Apples and pears uses and to form a single unit, so you can substitute any noun for that ie "Certain types of vegetables, such as vegetables, as well as milk impact my sleeping patterns". Certain types of vegetables is a noun phrase so you can go ahead and substitute a noun for that too, so "Vegetables, such as vegetables, as well as milk impact my sleeping pattern" and then such as vegetables is acting like a qualifier or something, so you can essentially take it out so the sentence would read Vegetables as well as milk impact my sleeping pattern.

If I were to modify the sentence, I would probably have it read: "I find that eating certain types of vegetables, such as apples and pears (which are fruits btw), as well as drinking milk impacts my sleeping pattern." I say this tentatively, because I think that in order to use the comparative "as well as" you need to have mentioned that drinking milk already in the context in order for it to work rhetorically- if you mean to say that both activities affect your sleeping pattern and have not yet talked about milk then I would probably revise it to say "I find that eating certain types of vegetables, such as apples and pears, and drinking milk impacts my sleeping pattern." because in doing this you use the coordinator "and" to connect "eating vegetables" and "drinking milk" into the same grammatical unit or whatever.

The answer to your question though is that no you shouldn't need a comma.

[peachy]

Re: Help us, Nazis

A recent thread here has me asking myself is it:

Might as well be.

Or

Mind as well be.

Have I been doing it wrong all my life?

Mine is well be.

It's "might as well".

[American Hero]

Re: Help us, Nazis

I once saw a girl on facebook that wrote that her and her boyfriend were "soul makes" then a bunch of people were like WTF? And she was like wut? LMAO!!!

[IamPinhead]

Re: Help us, Nazis

Or you could entirely cut out the unnecessary parts:
I find that fruits - such as apples and pears - and milk affect my sleep.
Edit: You should say "At the ad-group level" since it's similar.

[Czechs Mex]

Re: Help us, Nazis

I'm not looking for ways to restructure the sentence to avoid needing to know what the rule is. I just want to know what the rule is.

[facts]

Re: Help us, Nazis

you need a comma after the milk part because it is still an interupting phrase (it makes sense without that part) and commas always come around interupting phrases.

[Ωbright]

Re: Help us, Nazis

Yes, you do need a comma after milk.

If you grouped it like this "I find that certain types of vegetables, such as apples, pears, and milk, impact my sleeping patterns." You would need that comma there.

You didn't, but that doesn't mean you don't need the comma.

[peachy]

Re: Help us, Nazis

Yes, you do need a comma after milk.

If you grouped it like this "I find that certain types of vegetables, such as apples, pears, and milk, impact my sleeping patterns." You would need that comma there.

You didn't, but that doesn't mean you don't need the comma.

You are reading the sentence wrong.

If you want to include milk into your appositive the sentence no longer makes any sense in English- milk can't even be remotely considered in the same category as vegetables. The milk in the sentence is acting as part of the noun phrase, being included with "certain types of vegetables" by "as well as" which is functioning as a conjunction- and since when do we have a comma come after a noun phrase? The answer is that you don't.
For example:
"*Jim, Bob, and George, went to run."
"Jim, Bob, and George went out to run."

If you want an example where you use the same sort of adjectival phrase:
"*A couple of the boys, such as Jim and George, as well as Sally, went out to run."
"A couple of the boys, such as Jim and George, as well as Sally went out to run."

You can't include Sally in that adjective phrase because Sally is not part of the adjective phrase modifying the boys- and in the case of the sentence above you cannot include milk into the adjective phrase because milk is not modifying the noun phrase but adding on to it via "as well as" functioning as a conjunction.

The reason why it seems ambiguous and like there could be a comma there is that the sentence is very poorly constructed in the first place. It's nice to want to know the rule and all, but seriously with a sentence like that I think that knowing where and when to put commas is the least of your worries.

[IamPinhead]

Re: Help us, Nazis

Especially since apples, pears, and milk have nothing to do with vegetables, excluding a direct contrast in the former two.