We need to exercise the discipline as we advance into the rest of the paragraph. Our student, though, was not keeping to the rules, and so, as perhaps could be expected, the lack of control at the outset means that, by the third sentence, the writing begins more and more to fall apart as he wrestles with his ideas:
It was the first place of its kind, in America in this respect, also in the way he carefully detailed and drew up the system of government, to be implemented there, and proposal for future American colonies.
The student is trying to expand the reach of the essay, but stumbling in the attempt. The primary problem is again the fact that the student is thinking out loud, with the commas separating thought units rather than separating grammatical units; as such, the commas fail to contribute to the construction of meaning in the sentence, acting instead to make the writing jerky and less than clear.
We will try to sort out the problems step by step. The first main clause is:
It was the first place of its kind, in America in this respect…
This sounds awkward and is wrongly punctuated. T... Read more...
