A question about punctuation
Every man chased three deer going to the forest while eating oranges.
Every man chased three deer going to the forest, while eating oranges.
Does the comma greatly alter the meaning of the second sentence when compared with the first sentence?
Sorry about using such weird examples.Just to clarify, a man chased three deer each.
I particularly want to know if inserting the comma changes the referent of "while eating oranges" or perhaps makes it more clear---or is it simply superfluous?
Thanks
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As you suspected, in the first sentence it's ambiguous who is eating the oranges - is it the men or is it the deer? The comma in the second sentence makes it clear that it's not the deer and, therefore, must be the men. I'm not sure about "greatly" altering the meaning of the sentence, but it definitely does clarify the meaning of the sentence.
I think the ambiguity can be avoided by re-arranging the sentence like so:
Every man, while eating oranges, chased three deer into the forest.
This leaves no doubt as to who is eating the oranges.
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