Commas in Their Rightful Place

There is no end to questions about the comma. So how would you punctuate this sentence: The roads were impassable and as the emergency director pointed out the situation would continue for some time. Believe it or not, the orthodox rules would say like this: The roads were impassable, and, as the emergency director pointed out, the situation would continue for some time. Let’s see why.

You write a sentence, you wonder how to punctuate it—what do you do? The first step is always—always—to count the clauses. A clause is a group of words with a subject and its verb, and we identify clauses first because every clause is some kind of claim we are making, something we want the reader to understand or believe. Most of what we write for the practical concerns of the day (what is technically called expository prose) is a chaining together of such claims, and how we punctuate tells the reader how to associate and logically connect the many ideas a sentence presents.

Our example has three clauses, all of them independent. Clauses come in two types, independent (or main) and dependent (or subordinate), and it’s fairly easy to identify which type a certain clause is simply by asking whether it makes complete sense on its own. The roads were impassable—yes, that’s a complete thought in and of itself; as the emergency director pointed out—no, that’s not a complete thought because as makes the thought suggest a connection to something else; and the situation would continue for some time—yes, that can be well understood alone. So our example comprises three clauses, the first and third independent, with a dependent clause standing between them.

That, then, gives us the grammatical plan for the sentence, and what decisions we make about punctuating it will determine how readily our reader can build out an understanding from the words we present. The word and is joining two elements, and as a coordinating conjunction, it can only connect two grammatically similar elements. Here, that means the two independent clauses that begin and end the sentence. The subject of the first of those two independent clauses is the roads and the subject of the second is the situation—two different subjects. And the rule book says that when and joins two independent clauses with different subjects, a comma is to precede it. (In fact, if the sentence had read The roads were impassable and, as the emergency director pointed out, they would remain so for the foreseeable future, there would be no comma before the and because the subjects of the two independent clauses are logically the same.) This accounts, then, for the comma after impassable.

All this takes some close analysis, and the danger in such minute work is to miss the forest for the trees. We can protect ourselves against this risk by stepping back from the sentence, so to speak, remembering that commas sometimes, even often, work in pairs to keep elements in their rightful place. The subordinate clause we’ve identified constitutes an aside, an addition to the two independent clauses which is not strictly irrelevant, but also not essential to those two main thoughts. The addition, though, is still fairly closely related (the conjunction as suggests an illustration of supporting authority), and so to keep that additional remark together as the current of the sentence moves along, it is set off by a pair of commas, one where the subordinate clause begins and the other where it ends.

Thus our three commas to punctuate that longish sentence. It’s important to see again that the conjunction and is not joining the first and second clauses; it can’t, in fact, because and can only connect like grammatical elements, and here the first clause is independent, the second, subordinate. The first comma has that one specific function, while the pair of remaining commas has quite another: the first separates and the other two contain.

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Upcoming Online Short Courses

Basic Grammar Review

Tuesdays, August 29 through September 19
6:00 to 7:00 p.m. CT

Need a review of the basics of English grammar? With a confident grasp of sentence structure, you can revise your work more efficiently to make sure what you’re writing is what you really mean to say. This short course begins at the beginning. We’ll discuss how to write a clear sentence, how to choose strong vocabulary, and how to punctuate accurately. Get answers to your questions and get confident to work productively on your own. Tuition for this four-session online short course, including materials, is $300 paid through Zelle (ultimo@writingsmartly.com), or $310 paid through PayPal.

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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Where’s the Future?

Let’s take a test. (Always a good way to begin a discussion about grammar and writing.) Do you find anything to complain about, either grammatically or stylistically, in this sentence: Use a different address for your site administrator and avoid future suspensions of your email service. Grammatically, I think it passes the exam. Stylistically, however, it’s clumsy, and understanding exactly why will take us through some grammatical—and logical—territory to a fuller understanding of how subtle language can be.

Let’s begin with this reminder: anything we have to say or write involves us at once in three disciplines: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. We can study each of those subjects individually, but the minute we say or write anything, what we’re saying and how we’re saying it are inextricably interwoven. As the medieval educators put it, grammar teaches us how to say something, logic how to say something that makes sense, and rhetoric how to make sense persuasively. One discipline without the other two brings us up short.

Now when I judged a moment ago that our example is stylistically awkward, I was pointing to this third subject of rhetoric, the art of persuasion, or how best to match content and manner. The first rhetorical question to be answered in revising a document is always, who is my audience?, to whom—and why—am I writing this document? The sentence under examination here is aimed at a customer, and its purpose is to carefully warn that customer that consequences will come down should he not change his ways. The sentence has its eye, in other words, on the future, and on doing something now to avoid that future.

Indeed, the sentence says just that with the phrase avoid future suspensions. But if we look closely at that phrase, so closely that we consider its logical nuts and bolts, we can see that the writer has subtly misplaced his reference to time. The adjective future stands before the noun it modifies, suspensions, and in that position it intends to name an attribute, an essential and inseparable characteristic, of the noun it modifies. But are the suspensions he wishes the customer to avoid future suspensions, in the same way, for example, that they might be disruptive or frustrating suspensions? Or is it more logically the case that these suspensions are to be avoided in the future?

The writer, in other words, has referred to the idea of time as an adjective modifying a noun rather than as an adverb modifying a verb. The sentence speaks of avoiding future suspensions, not of avoiding suspensions in the future. And what difference does that make? Quite a lot, rhetorically, because it softens the tone of authoritative warning which would have come with the more straightforward construction of the transitive verb avoid followed immediately by its direct object suspensions. To have told a customer that he could avoid suspensions in the future would have carried with it a cold legalism; instead the writer buffered that effect by inserting an adjective between the verb and its object, and in so doing bent the logic a little by associating the idea of time with a noun, not a verb. But things don’t have time; actions do.

Whether the writer made this rhetorical move consciously or not, we all do this all the time: we shape our sentences for the audience and purpose at hand. In matters of rhetoric, the criterion of judgment is not right or wrong so much as it is appropriate or inappropriate to what and how we want to communicate an idea. Being sensitive to the covert suggestions of what we read and write and hear keeps us steady before what is now an ever-building wave of words in the world. That protective awareness, though, is rooted in the objective structure of language, a structure we can understand by looking not only grammatically, but logically and rhetorically as well at the sentences which claim our attention from every direction.

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Two Upcoming Online Short Courses

Basic Grammar Review

Tuesdays, August 29 through September 19
6:00 to 7:00 p.m. CT

Need a review of the basics of English grammar? With a confident grasp of sentence structure, you can revise your work more efficiently to make sure what you’re writing is what you really mean to say. This short course begins at the beginning. We’ll discuss how to write a clear sentence, how to choose strong vocabulary, and how to punctuate accurately. Get answers to your questions and get confident to work productively on your own. Tuition for this four-session online short course, including materials, is $300 paid through Zelle (ultimo@writingsmartly.com), or $310 paid through PayPal.

***

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.

***

Upcoming Online Short Courses

Basic Grammar Review

Tuesdays, August 29 through September 19
6:00 to 7:00 p.m. CT

Need a review of the basics of English grammar? With a confident grasp of sentence structure, you can revise your work more efficiently to make sure what you’re writing is what you really mean to say. This short course begins at the beginning. We’ll discuss how to write a clear sentence, how to choose strong vocabulary, and how to punctuate accurately. Get answers to your questions and get confident to work productively on your own. Tuition for this four-session online short course, including materials, is $300 paid through Zelle (ultimo@writingsmartly.com), or $310 paid through PayPal.

***

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.

***

That Comma Changes Everything

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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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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