She opened the door and, after consideration, went in. That's a correct set of commas within a compound predicate, right?
It is, but my ear wants to change it to something like after a moment's consideration. I'm not sure why, it just feels better. Maybe it's a rhythm thing. And hopefully a mod finds this and moves it to the appropriate forum. I'm not sure which one that would be though offhand.
Meh. It might be technically correct, but it's one ugly ass sentence. Comma bukkake, as I call it, where it might seem that the author is deliberately phrasing things so as to cram as many commas as possible into the sentence.
Moved to "word mechanics." Not sure what to title it... went with this as a placeholder. I can change it to whatever @Ellen_Hall prefers.
Wow, Homer on the spot!! That was quick! I was almost gonna say Word Mechanics, but then I was all like "I don't know, it's really more about punctuation... "
Word mechanics is kind of the grammatical catch-all thread. The last thing we need is sub-division to the syntactical level. Be sitting here all day moving threads around. @Seven Crowns had a thread or a post about commas and compound predicates not too long ago. She'd know better than the rest of us. I just think they're ugly as sin. All those funny little commas growing like weeds. There comes a point where grammar has to give way to general aesthetics, in my opinion.
It's called a free modifier. It's a type of parenthesis. It happens to fall inside of a compound predicate, but that's okay. You're technically not putting commas in the predicate itself, if that makes sense. It's just setting aside extra info. You could have done this with similar effect: She opened the door and went in, after consideration. Which doesn't sound as good, but that's not the point. The comma's pause is almost stylistic. You could remove it and the sentence would be fine, but you didn't because the way that you're intending the sentence to be read has a different meaning from a simple statement. The comma(s) show that the info isn't necessary. A parenthesis is a phrase that pauses the sentence as an aside. It's lazily called a "parenthetical." That's probably a better name for it, actually, since it doesn't remind you of punctuation. ("Actually" is a parenthetical in that sentence.) The most famous type is the appositive: My father, a famous drunk, tricycles to work. Here he is before his trike. Oh, Dad.
It looks like the word mechanics aspect of it has been resolved. As a small suggestion, if this is the POV character, why not explore the content of the consideration rather than just stating there was one? It seems like a great opportunity to me. She opened the door, but her hand lingered on the knob. If this turns out to be confetti and shouting, she thought, I'm doing a one-eighty.
I was trying to stay consistent with the original prose. I guess it's confusing if you imagine "opening the door wide" vs "opening the door slightly so that it is ajar."
She hesitated as she considered whether she should enter, her fingers caressing the cool metal of the latch as she listened for any sound from within. After a moment, she pushed the door gently inward and stepped into the room.
