Under the direction of General Manager, Rian Wagner, a motivated project team, including: Edison Ven, Gary Bon, Justin Bembi, Marco Conch, Leo Bold and Richard Trolo, led the effort to bring the area up to the Inner Messa standard.
Is the punctuation in this sentence correct? Should there be a comma at the end of the list (after "Rich Triolo")?
Best Answer
I would drop the comma after "General Manager," so that the title and name run continuously as "General Manager Rian Wagner"—just as if you were instead writing "President Harry Truman."
I would also try to uncomplicate the rest of the punctuation by changing "including" to "composed of" or "consisting of." This minor change would enable you to get rid of the comma after "project team" and the one after "Richard Trolo." If you had to keep the word "including," you could avoid the potentially dizzying effects of comma glut by changing the comma after "project team" and the one after "Richard Trolo" to em dashes (—).
In any case, I would delete the colon, since it doesn't work satisfactorily in a situation where you want to indicate the beginning of an independent clause that doesn't run all the way to the end of the sentence.
Finally, it strikes me as a bit odd to talk about a team leading an effort under the direction (that is, leadership) of a leader not listed as a team member. You might finesse your way around that problem by changing "led" to something like "spearheaded."
That would leave you with this revised wording (and punctuation):