Hi and welcome to the forums. You need the comma.

In the following sentence , do I need to place a comma after the introductory participial phrase? Walking in the street, the boy spotted one of his friends.  I have read a grammar book, which mentions that you only need to separate the

Use commas when the adjectives are of equal weight (modify the noun equally). If you can simply reverse the order of the adjectives, then you probably need a comma In the first phrase, I think "small" modifies "circular" more

1 A dog's brain is disproportionately small (compared) to the size of head. Among mammals, a dog's brain is disproportionately small for his head. 2 She knows him so well as to be able to write a message in his place and people would

No possessive punctuation . that of takes care of the possessive.

I see it this way: The first one: " Standing at the gate , James was stung by a scorpion . Standing- is used as a particple phrase. " James was stung by a scorpion standing at the gate ". Even being transposed,

Good evening, Chris, these are thought-provoking questions you have asked, and here is my opinion backed up by data from authoritative sources. 1. The possibility of tell filling the slot of talk in the example sentence seems questionable at

Yes, that makes perfect sense. Cheers! Any idea if they still count as serial commas if you're not listing nouns?

I have doubts about which verb tense should I I should use in these situations: ... Why should I use the -ing form in the first case and the infinitive in the second case? By doing so, you are merely following the usual conventions of English. It

why the comma disappears Because you're only joining two components. The same thing would happen in the main clause: The wind buffeted their bodies and lashed their legs. (No comma.) And the comma would reappear if there were three