punctuation

[thetnainghtay]

Hi everyone,
I wanna ask you the use of punctuation.

I wanna quote a sentence from the story " the tiger or the lady by Frank Stockton" .
Here is the sentence: So the accused person was instantly punished if guilty, and, if innocent, he was rewarded on the spot.


I found three commas. could you please explain me which comma can be omitted and why?

thanks a lot.

 

[Raymott]

Hi everyone,
I wanna ask you the use of punctuation.
You're an English teacher, and you use "wanna"? I hope you're not teaching this. It's wrong. You mean "I want to ..."
If you were a peasant, it probably wouldn't matter. But you're not.

I [STRIKE]wanna[/STRIKE] want to quote a sentence from the story " The tiger or the lady" by Frank Stockton.
Here is the sentence: So the accused person was instantly punished if guilty, and, if innocent, he was rewarded on the spot.


I found three commas. could you please explain me which comma can be omitted and why?

thanks a lot.

Yes, see the thread "Comma Use". Here you will find that no one here agrees on this.
My preference is for two commas: " ... if guilty and, if innocent, he ..."

However, you don't omit things from quotations. If Frank Stockton used three commas, and you are quoting him, you use three commas. Otherwise it's not a quote, and you're interfering with a piece of literature which others might want to use to establish the authority of using three commas.
(Thanks for finding this example - don't change it.)