Focusing on the obvious, I suspect the writer believes that "because" functions as a coordinating conjunction rather than a subordinating.  Does the student punctuate most subordinating clauses that follow the independent clause this way, or do he make this mistake with "because" only?

I seem to remember that Martha Kolln in _Rhetorical Grammar_ addresses the few instances when terminal subord. clauses are set off with commas.  

________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of T. J. Ray [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 8:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Punctuation Question

I have a doctoral student who produces sentences like the following:

"This quatrain cannot be read in isolation at all, because the syntax
is
inherent and incomplete on its own."

My question is not a search for whatever he meant to say but is about
his punctuation:  the comma.  Comments are welcome.

T. J.

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