Learn English – Are there too many commas in this sentence

commas

I moved to Huntington Beach, California, the home of my favorite band, Avenged Sevenfold, and started school there as a junior.

Are there too many commas in this sentence?

Best Answer

Grammatically speaking, every comma in that sentence is appropriately placed.

Stylistically speaking, some people find the use of "so many commas" to be offensive or distracting somehow. Since you are using commas for different purposes, you can make use of some other punctuation options for the different purposes.

The most obvious choice is to replace the "parenthetical commas" with actual parentheses:

I moved to Huntington Beach, California (the home of my favorite band, Avenged Sevenfold), and started school there as a junior.

Alternatively you could go with "parenthetical em-dashes":

I moved to Huntington Beach, California—the home of my favorite band, Avenged Sevenfold—and started school there as a junior.

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