Here are two sentences identical in every way except for a millimeter-size black mark (otherwise called a comma) after the word email. Do these sentences mean the same thing, or something entirely different:
The manager’s report included a detailed email, claiming other employees were involved as well.
The manager’s report included a detailed email claiming other employees were involved as well.
How do we best approach this problem? Methodically. It is always a good idea to determine first the number of clauses a sentence has. A clause is a group of words with a subject and a verb. Every clause is an assertion of some sort, and every time we assert, or say explicitly that something is or is not the case, we create a center around which other ideas take their place. Knowing where this center is in a sentence steadies us to examine the entire statement in an orderly way. Order brings confidence, and with that we’re likelier to find the answer we’re looking for.
Since the standard word order of a declarative sentence in English is subject + verb, working methodically means we begin at the beginning. It is a common mistake in learning how to analyze a sentence to begin right where we see the problem. A problem is always a part of a whole, a patch in a landscape, so it’s best to get a bird’s-eye view of the entire sentence first, then swoop down for the catch. Here there is only one assertion, one claim the writer is making: the manager’s report included something. The subject phrase is the manager’s report, and the verb for that report is included. That verb, in turn, needs an object to answer the question what did the report include?, and that direct object is a detailed email. We now see the lay of the grammatical land, and have a good footing from which to jump off into the rest.
With this one clause underfoot, we have come now to the problem, the detailed email and that fretful comma. But before finding an answer to our comma question, we must complete our survey of the entire statement. What remains are the seven words claiming other employees were involved as well. Those words constitute a phrase, not a clause, because there is no subject paired with a verb. It is true logically that someone or something is claiming something, but look very closely: this group of seven words does not include the verb is. That’s not quibbling, that’s analyzing, and it means that claiming is not a verb making an explicit claim, but a participle—an adjective built from a verb. This last half of the sentence, then, is nothing more than a phrase serving as one adjective for some noun somewhere before it.
Good to know, because that puts us one step closer to our answer. The point of a comma is to cut, and so in the first version, the comma after the noun email is there to tell the reader to cut the connection between the noun email and that seven-word adjectival phrase. That means we have to understand back into the sentence, so to speak, and associate that phrase with the next noun to appear as we look back: report, or more fully, the manager’s report. That is to say, it was the report that claimed there were other employees involved in whatever happened. That report included a detailed and apparently substantiating email, but it wasn’t the email but the report in its entirety that made the further claim.
But that second version without the comma? If there’s no comma, there’s nothing to cut, so the connection between the adjective phrase and its nearest noun, email, remains secure and significant. Now it is exactly the email, not the report in its entirety, that is claiming the involvement of other employees. And that could be very important to the defense if there ends up being something fishy about that one email.
Commas, then, are a big deal, because they are a grammatical tool that often (not always) works closely with logic. And when it’s a matter of saying one thing and meaning another, there’s really very little question whether it’s worth the time to understand how the comma works. It’s always good to be understood.
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Upcoming Short Course
Reading Closely to Write
Wednesdays, August 23 through September 13
6:00 to 7:00 p.m. CT
It’s an open secret that we learn to write better and better by reading more and more closely. On Wednesday, August 23, Writing Smartly will begin another short course of four one-hour sessions called Reading Closely to Write. Each week we will examine the structure and stylistic design of sentences from one or two very short stories (each averaging about 16 pages) written by celebrated authors. We will analyze the grammar and composition of certain significant sentences, and consider how other designs the author could have chosen would have produced different effects. Our emphasis will be on the language of the readings, so that we can begin to develop an eye and ear for discovering our own written voice.
New selections this term will be from The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, edited by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco Publishers, 2008), readily available at Amazon and elsewhere. Tuition for this four-session online short course is $300 paid through Zelle (ultimo@writingsmartly.com), or $310 paid through PayPal.
If you have any questions, please email me directly. I hope you can join us.
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