I believe you're right in thinking he feels this is a coordinate 
conjunction.  My understanding is that
"because" clauses are dependent and hence should not be preceded with 
a comma.  I just
wanted a number of opinions before I bring it to the committee's 
attention, folks who evidently
don't see a problem with it as no one had marked any of these before I 
saw the MSS.

Thanks for your time.



On Wednesday 04/13/2011 at 5:43 am, "Dixon, Jack"   wrote:
> 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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