Have you worked out what to do?

Sentences that are too long with simple subjects and compound predicates do not need commas; they need rewriting.

This is how you should write that sentence:

“Hannah’s husband Andy draws up building plans for an architect during the week, and he also paints beautiful landscapes using charcoal and pencils at the weekend.”

Another subject has been added (he is a pronoun that refers to Andy) to make the second bit of the sentence into an independent clause. Now, when your readers pause where the comma is, they are getting a refresher on who the subject is. And using a transitional word, in this case, “also”, gives a reader more of a sense of continuation.

Perhaps we should have a refresher on the rules for commas and independent clauses:

When a coordinating conjunction (as, or, not, and, but, yet, so, etc.) is used to join two independent clauses, a comma should be placed after the first independent clause and before the coordinating junction.

This also tells you why compound predicates should not be split. The result is a dependent clause regardless of how many verbs have been used to describe an action. And independent clauses or phrases (in our case that is a group of words containing a verb and no subject) should never be split away from the parent clause (an independent clause containing a subject) with a comma.

Another way to rewrite that longer sentence would be:

“Hannah’s husband Andy draws up building plans for an architect during the week. He also paints beautiful landscapes using charcoal and pencils at the weekend.”

All you need to do is break a long sentence down into two shorter sentences. That sentence is now a good deal easier to read and understand and a compound predicate has not been split with a comma that isn’t needed.

Rules are there to be broken and, sure, you can break them when the effect is nice and pleasing. There’s a thing about breaking rules though; you shouldn’t break them if you don’t know them or understand them in the first place. If you don’t, then your writing is not going to scan well, your readers will drop you like a hot cake, and not even the grammar gods will help you if you come up with a sentence that reads like this:

“I am staying at home today, and am going to be working on my next book.”

What’s wrong with this? “and am” is what is wrong with it; it is meaningless so don’t use it!

It doesn’t matter whether you love rules and want to follow them or you just want to break them; it is your readers that are important so be nice to them. Make life easy for them and don’t split your compound predicates.  And get those commas in the right place or don’t use them at all.

I wonder how many of you will be frantically scanning your work for incorrect commas now?