Edmund,

I don't think the comma indicates any special meaning beyond the implication that there is a special meaning.  Some teachers have given the unfortunate advice to students to put commas where there are pauses, generally unsound advice, but this is a case where the pause occurs because there is the sort of special meaning you describe and the comma helps to signal that.  So in this case the comma does mark something that we would mark in speech with a pause.  Not a standard use of the comma but certainly a legitimate one.  Your better writing students would understand this usage and would not take it as license to put commas wherever they feel a pause occurring.  Poorer students might not.  

As Humpty Dumpty might suggest, it's a matter of who's in charge, the writer or the comma.

Herb 

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edmond Wright
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2009 4:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 'Because' clause and a preceding comma: a query

Writing a pre-Christmas email I discovered an oddity concerning the
punctuation of an adverbial clause of reason (beginning with 'because').

Compare these two sentences:

(A)  You can open the box, because the lock is a cheap one.
(B)  You can open the box because the lock is a cheap one.

Imagine a context round (A) in which the speaker is giving the addressee
permission to open the box by damaging the lock, which, because of its
cheapness, the speaker, who owns it, does not mind.  The comma -- and a
pause in speech -- seem right for such a meaning.  There is no suggestion
that the poorness of the lock will make it easy to open:  indeed, the
opposite might be the case.

In (B) the speaker appears to be explaining that, because the box has a poor
lock, it can be easily opened.  The question of ownership of box and lock is
here irrelevant.  The absence of the comma and the pause seems to indicate
this second meaning -- though why I've no idea!

Edmond Wright


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
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Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

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