U.S. Attorney Damian Williams’ indictment involves relatively small illegal campaign donations — but points to the mayoral campaign’s larger assault on New York City’s generous campaign finance program.
I came across this several hours later and just now realized there needs to be a comma after the word “Stealing”. I thought it was some new weird ass wall street economic crime term, “stealing speaks”?
No, there should not be a comma there. “The $10 million Eric Adams is charged with” is the subject of the sentence. If you make it less complex, like “the money speaks to a vaster plot”, it should be obvious that “the money, speaks to a vaster plot” is incorrect.
The mess of prepositions does make it awkward, but there’s nothing incorrect about it. It could easily be made more clear with phrasing like “Eric Adams’ $10m theft charge indicates a larger plot”. You could spice it up with more colorful synonyms if you want, but I would still avoid “speaks”.
I came across this several hours later and just now realized there needs to be a comma after the word “Stealing”. I thought it was some new weird ass wall street economic crime term, “stealing speaks”?
No, there should not be a comma there. “The $10 million Eric Adams is charged with” is the subject of the sentence. If you make it less complex, like “the money speaks to a vaster plot”, it should be obvious that “the money, speaks to a vaster plot” is incorrect.
The mess of prepositions does make it awkward, but there’s nothing incorrect about it. It could easily be made more clear with phrasing like “Eric Adams’ $10m theft charge indicates a larger plot”. You could spice it up with more colorful synonyms if you want, but I would still avoid “speaks”.
Another way to put it that shows that there should be no comma : “Eric Adams is charged with stealing $10M. This speaks to a larger plot.”
Ironically, the comma you used here is inappropriate for the same reason.
Hah, you caught it before the edit. I had rewritten the sentence and the comma was a leftover from the previous syntax.