Essay #4 Options Due May 16
Writing Assignment Option #1
Develop a thesis that explains how Ursula Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (should be online) is an allegory of the moral challenges we face as we are drugged by privilege leaving us indifferent about the sufferings of The Other. Successful essays will connect the allegory to modern day social injustices such as the inhumane working conditions of migrant workers or the incarceration system, to name a couple.
Explanation
The privileged position themselves to sacrifice a group to perpetuate the privileged group's power. The privileged, like the leaders in Le Guin's short story, rationalize their exploitation of the sacrificed group by making utilitarian pronouncements such as "sacrificing a few for the greater good."
The poor are used as a resource in our society. They pay for municipal violations, they pay higher fees for cars, house, interest payments. There is an entire industry based on exploiting the poor. For example, there are check cashing agencies in poor neighborhoods that take a huge percentage out of the check before handing over the cash.
Small children work in sweat shops all over the world. They don't have a childhood. They don't see their parents. They are slaves. However, they are in demand because they allow American consumers to buy clothes for cheap. Thus these small children are sacrificed for our consumer pleasures.
The same can be said with agriculture. People work in substandard working conditions so we, the consumer, can buy affordable produce.
The same can be said of the restaurant industry. People are exploited so we, the hungry diner, can "eat out on the cheap."
Perhaps the worst sacrifice is made in the industrial prison complex where poor people of color are the primary source of income for this industry.
Theme of Denial
We are all upset by injustice, but we can inure ourselves to cruelty and injustice through denial or willed ignorance.
We rationalize:
"Someone's gotta clean those toilets."
"Someone's gotta pick cheap produce so I can feed my family."
"I'm sad that cows cry before they get slaughtered, but dang that double cheeseburger with goat cheese, bacon, onion rings and sopping with tangy chipotle mayonnaise is delicious."
"I know my peanut butter has cockroach pieces and rat hair in it, but what are you going to do?"
To use the above John Oliver video in a comparison with the Ursula Le Guin short story, you might consider the following parallels of moral shortcomings:
denial
compartmentalization
desensitization to cruelty
confusing majority rule with moral order
confusing status quo with moral order
preferring self-interest and pleasure over moral duty to others as a Faustian Bargain (deal with the devil)
Writing Option #2
Defend, refute, or complicate Bloom's assertion in "Against Empathy" that empathy, contrary to popular opinion, is not a virtue in the face of evidence that empathy is a form of "irrational compassion" that can be destructive and inimical to human affairs.
Sources:
"Why Paul Bloom Is Wrong About Empathy and Morality"
"I Could Say That Paul Bloom Is a Callous Idiot, But I Empathize With Him"
Suggested Outline
Paragraph 1 is your introduction, a summary of Bloom's points.
Paragraph 2 is your agreement or disagreement with Bloom, your thesis.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7 is your counterargument-rebuttal section.
Paragraph 8 is your conclusion, a restatement of your thesis.
Writing Option #3
Support, refute, or complicate Malcolm Gladwell's claim that expensive universities are immoral to serve gourmet food to their students because the cost excludes financially challenged students from attending these universities.
Sources
Morality of Food Choices in Malcolm Gladwell's Podcast;
Bowdoin's Defense Against Gladwell
Mother Jones Challenges Gladwell
Gladwell's Food Fight podcast on YouTube
Writing Option #4
Support, refute, or complicate the claim that the disease model of addiction can be harmful to some addicts who would benefit more from a habit or conditioning model of addiction.
Sources
Addiction is not a disease" reviewed by Laura Miller
"Is Addiction a Habit or a Disease?" by Zachary Siegel
"Addiction is a Disease and Needs to be Treated as Such"by David Sack.
See Ed Kressy’s autobiographical essay.
Writing Option #5
Support or refute the argument that there is no valid defense of the Anti-Vaxxer position. You can consult the following:
"Why Vaccination Refusal Is a White Privilege Problem"
"Anti-Vaxxers: Enjoying the Privilege of Putting Everyone at Risk"
"What Everyone Gets Wrong About Anti-Vaccine Parents"
"We Seem to be More Frightened Than We've Ever Been"
"How to Change an Anti-Vaxxer's Mind"
Sample Thesis
While many parents are well intentioned and fearful of vaccines as they are mired in a sea of overwhelming alarmist information, their decision to deny their children vaccines is misguided, at best, and morally repugnant, more likely, when we consider their refusal to acknowledge real science and empirical evidence, their reliance on logical fallacies and quack pseudo-science, their narcissistic conspiracy mentality, and, most of all, their decision to exact a potentially fatal pestilence upon our children.
Sample Outline
Paragraph 1: In your introduction explain the justifications used for the anti-vaxxer movement.
Paragraph 2: Refute or defend those justifications in your thesis.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7 is your counterargument-rebuttal section.
Paragraph 8 is your conclusion, a restatement of your thesis.
Group Activity
Get into groups of 4 or 5 and ask the following 3 questions:
One. Do you have an emotional response to parents who don't vaccinate their children?
Two. Are parents who don't vaccinate their children getting a "bad rap"? Explain.
Three. How could you incorporate these two questions into an introduction for your essay?
Writing Option #6
Support, refute, or complicate Tom James' claim that the promises of legal pot have not been fulfilled by incompetence, corruption, and confusion.
Sources
The Failed Promise of Legal Pot
Sentence Fragment and Comma Splice Review
Find fragments and comma splices in the following:
I’ve been teaching college composition and critical thinking for thirty years. If I had to pick a year that defined a radical change in my students, I’d have to point to 2012, that was the year things started to go downhill, it was the year when smartphone users in the United States topped 100 million. It was the year a growing number of Americans, and people worldwide, began to see the smartphone as a necessity. More important than having a toothbrush or wearing underwear. The smartphone became an external organ, a kidney with Wi-Fi.
More than a human appendage, the smartphone became an opium-drip machine that you carried around with you 24/7. You could enjoy validation and dopamine all day long. Until the mindless zombie state took over and depression set in.
Depression made people turn to their little opium gadgets with even greater intensity. As if the very source of their mental disease might save them and put them into states of euphoria the gadget had once provided them.
I talk about the smartphone-induced zombie state with my students all the time, I talk about how this zombie state will make them “bottom feeders” in the new economy. Their time and energy wasted on their opium machine will make them lose their competitive edge to those who have the strength of mind to keep their smartphones in their proper place.
I tell my students that this zombie state was prophesied in the 1999 film The Matrix. In which we see we have a choice to take the red pill of knowledge or the blue pill of ignorance. Most people in the film’s future dystopia choose ignorance. The blue pill prophecy was fulfilled, I tell my students, in 2012 when everyone in the world believed, erroneously, they not only did they need a smartphone; they needed to constantly address the smartphone’s voracious appetites.
All of my students have horror stories of friends and family members whose lives have been ruined by smartphone addiction. They’ve traded ambition and caring for being numbed and depressed by their little dopamine device. They talk of older brothers and sisters, unemployed college dropouts, who, malnourished and corpse-like, languish in dank, dimly-lit basements where they are shackled to their smartphones all day and night.
My students speak of their own battles with social media-induced depression. Many of them have deleted their Facebook accounts, they all feel better for it. I’ve had students announce to the class that they deleted their Facebook account and it was followed by applause as if they were announcing their many days of sobriety at an A.A. meeting.
I confess to my students that while I rarely use my five-year-old smartphone, a dinosaur by today’s standards, I have wasted much time relaxing in front of the Internet since the late 1990s when I was deluded, like millions of others, into believing surfing the Net gave me infinite possibilities and a giddy sense of omnipotence. But thousands of hours wasted on entertainment and consumer research was time I could have spent practicing writing and playing piano. Rather than honing those skills, I’ve remained a dilettante.
I, too, am in need of an intervention, I confess to my students. I, too, am a casualty of the false utopian promises of technology. Looking at twenty years and tens of thousands of hours wasted wallowing in the malaise of the Internet's languid seductions, I must now redeem myself. Before it's too late.
Essay #4 Options Due May 16
Writing Assignment Option #1
Develop a thesis that explains how Ursula Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (should be online) is an allegory of the moral challenges we face as we are drugged by privilege leaving us indifferent about the sufferings of The Other. Successful essays will connect the allegory to modern day social injustices such as the inhumane working conditions of migrant workers or the incarceration system, to name a couple.
Explanation
The privileged position themselves to sacrifice a group to perpetuate the privileged group's power. The privileged, like the leaders in Le Guin's short story, rationalize their exploitation of the sacrificed group by making utilitarian pronouncements such as "sacrificing a few for the greater good."
The poor are used as a resource in our society. They pay for municipal violations, they pay higher fees for cars, house, interest payments. There is an entire industry based on exploiting the poor. For example, there are check cashing agencies in poor neighborhoods that take a huge percentage out of the check before handing over the cash.
Small children work in sweat shops all over the world. They don't have a childhood. They don't see their parents. They are slaves. However, they are in demand because they allow American consumers to buy clothes for cheap. Thus these small children are sacrificed for our consumer pleasures.
The same can be said with agriculture. People work in substandard working conditions so we, the consumer, can buy affordable produce.
The same can be said of the restaurant industry. People are exploited so we, the hungry diner, can "eat out on the cheap."
Perhaps the worst sacrifice is made in the industrial prison complex where poor people of color are the primary source of income for this industry.
Theme of Denial
We are all upset by injustice, but we can inure ourselves to cruelty and injustice through denial or willed ignorance.
We rationalize:
"Someone's gotta clean those toilets."
"Someone's gotta pick cheap produce so I can feed my family."
"I'm sad that cows cry before they get slaughtered, but dang that double cheeseburger with goat cheese, bacon, onion rings and sopping with tangy chipotle mayonnaise is delicious."
"I know my peanut butter has cockroach pieces and rat hair in it, but what are you going to do?"
To use the above John Oliver video in a comparison with the Ursula Le Guin short story, you might consider the following parallels of moral shortcomings:
denial
compartmentalization
desensitization to cruelty
confusing majority rule with moral order
confusing status quo with moral order
preferring self-interest and pleasure over moral duty to others as a Faustian Bargain (deal with the devil)
Study Questions
One. What is the role of Dionysian ecstasy in the story?
The "clamor of bells," dancing, and celebration is about being grateful, but to surrender to one's praise of happiness one must forget about the dark side, the tiger's claw beneath the velvet carpet.
To be happy requires compartmentalization, having your happy "pocket" and keeping your sad "pocket" hidden.
American slave owners committed heinous acts against their slaves before coming home to pray with their families, read bedtime stories to their children, and smile piously to Jesus before sleeping with a saint-like grin, only to wake up in the morning and start their acts of abomination all over again.
These slave owners are compartmentalizing. Their left hand commits evil and their right hand, unaware of what the left hand is doing, prays with piety to its white Jesus.
We cannot be happy in heaven if were conscious of those suffering in hell.
How do we enjoy our juicy medium-rare steak when we know that the cow whose butchered cuts we're savoring trembled with terror, cried out, and let out explosive diarrhea before being cut into hundreds of pieces?
How do we enjoy an expensive dinner at a fancy restaurant when we know every 5 seconds a baby somewhere in the world dies of starvation?
How do we enjoy our recently purchased clothes when we know they were made from child slaves?
Speaking of slaves, the American economy boomed when slavery in the south was at its peak. The cotton industry fed the American economic machine, causing white Americans to shout with joy, "Cotton is king!" All the while, every sort of abomination was committed against the slaves. How could the white people be so happy when they knew another group of people was suffering with such unspeakable torment?
The short answer: compartmentalization.
And this leads us to one of the story's major themes: Compartmentalization is a moral abomination.
The collective joy in the opening paragraph is the joy resulting from a collective delusion, a shared psychosis. To partake in such a psychosis destroys the moral order.
Two. What kind of society is Omelas?
We know they are not simple. They are smart.
They do not own slaves.
They are not ruled by a monarchy.
They were happy yet intelligent.
However, they had succumbed to the "banality of evil," the notion that evil exists in our every day lives without drama or spectacle. Rather, evil exists insidiously and we become numb and inured (accustomed) to it.
We pen up livestock, torture and abuse millions of pigs, cows, and chickens, and gnash our teeth into these slaughtered meats while laughing and slapping our thighs in chicken wing bars.
This society exhibits other moral failures with its "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em" philosophy. They are conformists. Everyone tows the line and does their share. Conformity to an evil order makes us evil. But we haven't seen the evil in the story yet.
We also know that they have kept their desires (concupiscence) in check. They are neither peasants nor technophiles always wanting the newest smartphone. They are in the middle. They want comfort and luxury, but not in excess.
Omelas is a society that has mastered compartmentalization to the point that they have eradicated guilt.
They take a dreamy drug called drooz that gives them "dreamy languor." We are assured that it is not habit forming.
Three. What is the allegory of the boy locked up in a cellar?
The boy could represent any exploited group, including the poor.
The boy reminds me of a calf waiting to be turned into veal.
Or the service industry serving the expensive appetites of the booming tech industry in San Francisco as explored in "Dinner, Disrupted" by Daniel Duane.
I am reminded of girls in India who are forced by their families to be surrogate mothers for a few thousand dollars.
I am reminded of the babies sold in the surrogacy industry who are later victims of human trafficking.
The people of Omelas have made peace with the suffering boy as a bargain for their happiness. They have sold their souls to the devil, so to speak. They live in a dystopia, a sort of hell on earth.
The children initially disgusted by seeing the suffering child begin to accept its suffering. They see the child as subhuman and incapable of achieving happiness anyway. This reminds me of academics who speak of "the underclass," so well articulated in Bell Hooks' essay.
A "good" white person (living in accordance with the laws of the land regardless of how racist) during times of slavery would not want to live in a nice house, attend a nice school, attend beautiful cultural events, and enjoy the progress of technology if all these things were built on the blood, sweat, and tears of slavery.
Morality cannot exist with compartmentalization. To have morality is to be spiritual and to be spiritual begins with seeing the human race as a unified whole.
We are only as good as we treat the least fortunate and most exploited among us.
Writing Option #2
Defend, refute, or complicate Bloom's assertion in "Against Empathy" that empathy, contrary to popular opinion, is not a virtue in the face of evidence that empathy is a form of "irrational compassion" that can be destructive and inimical to human affairs.
Sources:
"Why Paul Bloom Is Wrong About Empathy and Morality"
"I Could Say That Paul Bloom Is a Callous Idiot, But I Empathize With Him"
Suggested Outline
Paragraph 1 is your introduction, a summary of Bloom's points.
Paragraph 2 is your agreement or disagreement with Bloom, your thesis.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7 is your counterargument-rebuttal section.
Paragraph 8 is your conclusion, a restatement of your thesis.
Writing Option #3
Support, refute, or complicate Malcolm Gladwell's claim that expensive universities are immoral to serve gourmet food to their students because the cost excludes financially challenged students from attending these universities.
Sources
Morality of Food Choices in Malcolm Gladwell's Podcast;
Bowdoin's Defense Against Gladwell
Mother Jones Challenges Gladwell
Gladwell's Food Fight podcast on YouTube
Writing Option #4
Support, refute, or complicate the claim that the disease model of addiction can be harmful to some addicts who would benefit more from a habit or conditioning model of addiction.
Sources
Addiction is not a disease" reviewed by Laura Miller
"Is Addiction a Habit or a Disease?" by Zachary Siegel
"Addiction is a Disease and Needs to be Treated as Such"by David Sack.
See Ed Kressy’s autobiographical essay.
Writing Option #5
Support or refute the argument that there is no valid defense of the Anti-Vaxxer position. You can consult the following:
"Why Vaccination Refusal Is a White Privilege Problem"
"Anti-Vaxxers: Enjoying the Privilege of Putting Everyone at Risk"
"What Everyone Gets Wrong About Anti-Vaccine Parents"
"We Seem to be More Frightened Than We've Ever Been"
"How to Change an Anti-Vaxxer's Mind"
Sample Thesis
While many parents are well intentioned and fearful of vaccines as they are mired in a sea of overwhelming alarmist information, their decision to deny their children vaccines is misguided, at best, and morally repugnant, more likely, when we consider their refusal to acknowledge real science and empirical evidence, their reliance on logical fallacies and quack pseudo-science, their narcissistic conspiracy mentality, and, most of all, their decision to exact a potentially fatal pestilence upon our children.
Sample Outline
Paragraph 1: In your introduction explain the justifications used for the anti-vaxxer movement.
Paragraph 2: Refute or defend those justifications in your thesis.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7 is your counterargument-rebuttal section.
Paragraph 8 is your conclusion, a restatement of your thesis.
Group Activity
Get into groups of 4 or 5 and ask the following 3 questions:
One. Do you have an emotional response to parents who don't vaccinate their children?
Two. Are parents who don't vaccinate their children getting a "bad rap"? Explain.
Three. How could you incorporate these two questions into an introduction for your essay?
Writing Option #6
Support, refute, or complicate Tom James' claim that the promises of legal pot have not been fulfilled by incompetence, corruption, and confusion.
Sources
The Failed Promise of Legal Pot
Writing Assignment Option #1
Develop a thesis that explains how Ursula Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (should be online) is an allegory of the moral challenges we face as we are drugged by privilege leaving us indifferent about the sufferings of The Other. Successful essays will connect the allegory to modern day social injustices such as the inhumane working conditions of migrant workers or the incarceration system, to name a couple.
Explanation
The privileged position themselves to sacrifice a group to perpetuate the privileged group's power. The privileged, like the leaders in Le Guin's short story, rationalize their exploitation of the sacrificed group by making utilitarian pronouncements such as "sacrificing a few for the greater good."
The poor are used as a resource in our society. They pay for municipal violations, they pay higher fees for cars, house, interest payments. There is an entire industry based on exploiting the poor. For example, there are check cashing agencies in poor neighborhoods that take a huge percentage out of the check before handing over the cash.
Small children work in sweat shops all over the world. They don't have a childhood. They don't see their parents. They are slaves. However, they are in demand because they allow American consumers to buy clothes for cheap. Thus these small children are sacrificed for our consumer pleasures.
The same can be said with agriculture. People work in substandard working conditions so we, the consumer, can buy affordable produce.
The same can be said of the restaurant industry. People are exploited so we, the hungry diner, can "eat out on the cheap."
Perhaps the worst sacrifice is made in the industrial prison complex where poor people of color are the primary source of income for this industry.
Theme of Denial
We are all upset by injustice, but we can inure ourselves to cruelty and injustice through denial or willed ignorance.
We rationalize:
"Someone's gotta clean those toilets."
"Someone's gotta pick cheap produce so I can feed my family."
"I'm sad that cows cry before they get slaughtered, but dang that double cheeseburger with goat cheese, bacon, onion rings and sopping with tangy chipotle mayonnaise is delicious."
"I know my peanut butter has cockroach pieces and rat hair in it, but what are you going to do?"
Study Questions
One. What is the role of Dionysian ecstasy in the story?
The "clamor of bells," dancing, and celebration is about being grateful, but to surrender to one's praise of happiness one must forget about the dark side, the tiger's claw beneath the velvet carpet.
To be happy requires compartmentalization, having your happy "pocket" and keeping your sad "pocket" hidden.
American slave owners committed heinous acts against their slaves before coming home to pray with their families, read bedtime stories to their children, and smile piously to Jesus before sleeping with a saint-like grin, only to wake up in the morning and start their acts of abomination all over again.
These slave owners are compartmentalizing. Their left hand commits evil and their right hand, unaware of what the left hand is doing, prays with piety to its white Jesus.
We cannot be happy in heaven if were conscious of those suffering in hell.
How do we enjoy our juicy medium-rare steak when we know that the cow whose butchered cuts we're savoring trembled with terror, cried out, and let out explosive diarrhea before being cut into hundreds of pieces?
How do we enjoy an expensive dinner at a fancy restaurant when we know every 5 seconds a baby somewhere in the world dies of starvation?
How do we enjoy our recently purchased clothes when we know they were made from child slaves?
Speaking of slaves, the American economy boomed when slavery in the south was at its peak. The cotton industry fed the American economic machine, causing white Americans to shout with joy, "Cotton is king!" All the while, every sort of abomination was committed against the slaves. How could the white people be so happy when they knew another group of people was suffering with such unspeakable torment?
The short answer: compartmentalization.
And this leads us to one of the story's major themes: Compartmentalization is a moral abomination.
The collective joy in the opening paragraph is the joy resulting from a collective delusion, a shared psychosis. To partake in such a psychosis destroys the moral order.
Two. What kind of society is Omelas?
We know they are not simple. They are smart.
They do not own slaves.
They are not ruled by a monarchy.
They were happy yet intelligent.
However, they had succumbed to the "banality of evil," the notion that evil exists in our every day lives without drama or spectacle. Rather, evil exists insidiously and we become numb and inured (accustomed) to it.
We pen up livestock, torture and abuse millions of pigs, cows, and chickens, and gnash our teeth into these slaughtered meats while laughing and slapping our thighs in chicken wing bars.
This society exhibits other moral failures with its "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em" philosophy. They are conformists. Everyone tows the line and does their share. Conformity to an evil order makes us evil. But we haven't seen the evil in the story yet.
We also know that they have kept their desires (concupiscence) in check. They are neither peasants nor technophiles always wanting the newest smartphone. They are in the middle. They want comfort and luxury, but not in excess.
Omelas is a society that has mastered compartmentalization to the point that they have eradicated guilt.
They take a dreamy drug called drooz that gives them "dreamy languor." We are assured that it is not habit forming.
Three. What is the allegory of the boy locked up in a cellar?
The boy could represent any exploited group, including the poor.
The boy reminds me of a calf waiting to be turned into veal.
Or the service industry serving the expensive appetites of the booming tech industry in San Francisco as explored in "Dinner, Disrupted" by Daniel Duane.
I am reminded of girls in India who are forced by their families to be surrogate mothers for a few thousand dollars.
I am reminded of the babies sold in the surrogacy industry who are later victims of human trafficking.
The people of Omelas have made peace with the suffering boy as a bargain for their happiness. They have sold their souls to the devil, so to speak. They live in a dystopia, a sort of hell on earth.
The children initially disgusted by seeing the suffering child begin to accept its suffering. They see the child as subhuman and incapable of achieving happiness anyway. This reminds me of academics who speak of "the underclass," so well articulated in Bell Hooks' essay.
A "good" white person (living in accordance with the laws of the land regardless of how racist) during times of slavery would not want to live in a nice house, attend a nice school, attend beautiful cultural events, and enjoy the progress of technology if all these things were built on the blood, sweat, and tears of slavery.
Morality cannot exist with compartmentalization. To have morality is to be spiritual and to be spiritual begins with seeing the human race as a unified whole.
We are only as good as we treat the least fortunate and most exploited among us.
The story is about how evil flourishes in false utopias where people are encouraged to feel good about themselves.
To use the above John Oliver video in a comparison with the Ursula Le Guin short story, you might consider the following parallels of moral shortcomings:
denial
compartmentalization
desensitization to cruelty
confusing majority rule with moral order
confusing status quo with moral order
preferring self-interest and pleasure over moral duty to others as a Faustian Bargain (deal with the devil)
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Comma Rules (based in part by Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers)
Commas are designed to help writers avoid confusing sentences and to clarify the logic of their sentences.
If you cook Jeff will clean the dishes. (Will you cook Jeff?)
While we were eating a rattlesnake approached us. (Were we eating a rattlesnake?)
Comma Rule 1: Use a comma before a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS) joining two independent clauses.
Rattlesnakes are high in protein, but I’d rather eat a peanut butter sandwich.
Rattlesnakes are dangerous, and the desert species are even more so.
We are a proud people, for our ancestors passed down these famous delicacies over a period of five thousand years.
The exception to rule 1 is when the two independent clauses are short:
The plane took off and we were on our way.
Comma Rule 2: Use a comma after an introductory clause or phrase.
When Jeff Henderson was in prison, he developed an appetite for reading.
In the nearby room, the TV is blaring full blast.
Tanning in the hot Hermosa Beach sun for over two hours, I realized I had better call it a day.
The exception is when the short adverb clause or phrase is short and doesn’t create the possibility of a misreading:
In no time we were at 2,800 feet.
Comma Rule 3: Use a comma between all items in a series.
Jeff Henderson found redemption through hard work, self-reinvention, and social altruism.
Finding his passion, mastering his craft, and giving back to the community were all part of Jeff Henderson’s self-reinvention.
Comma Rule 4: Use a comma between coordinate adjectives not joined with “and.” Do not use a comma between cumulative adjectives.
The adjectives below are called coordinate because they modify the noun separately:
Jeff Henderson is a passionate, articulate, wise speaker.
The adjectives above are coordinate because they can be joined with “and.” Jeff Henderson is passionate and articulate and wise.
Adjectives that do not modify the noun separately are cumulative.
Three large gray shapes moved slowly toward us.
Chocolate fudge peanut butter swirl coconut cake is divine.
Comma Rule 5: Use commas to set off nonrestrictive (nonessential) elements.
Restrictive or essential information doesn’t have a comma:
For school the students need notebooks that are college-ruled.
Jeff’s cat that just had kittens became very aggressive.
Nonrestrictive:
For school the students need college-ruled notebooks, which are on sale at the bookstore.
Jeff Henderson’s mansion, which is located in Las Vegas, has a state-of-the-art kitchen.
My youngest sister, who plays left wing on the soccer team, now lives at The Sands, a beach house near Los Angeles.
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