(April 23, 2015 at 12:08 pm)Alex K Wrote: Ben Davis,
do I have to do both 1.) and 2.) in order to be consistent? In my above sentence, putting them before and after the "and" as in
"has a nice flow to it, and, more importantly, that ..."
looks excessive to me
...
It isn't excessive. However, it is optional, as Ben Davis stated.
If you have the comma before the word "and," it emphasizes that the second conjunct of the conjunction is an added afterthought. To make it seem more like an afterthought, sometimes people put a period and start the next sentence with the word "And." (Although some people have been told that it is wrong to start a sentence with the word "And," it isn't. Just do an online search and you should find information about this on reputable sites.)
Since it is optional, you are not wrong to leave it off. So you are going to have to do something else to try to convince us that you are not really a native speaker of English. Your grammar and word usage are such that one would guess you to be a well-educated native speaker.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
