I find Craig's sentence to be awkward in either form.  I would have said,
"People are abandoning their homes, in part, because they are worth less
than they owe."  As far as punctuation, out Freshman English classes had
exercises on the topic: one punctuation error studied took 15 points off the
weekly theme score; two took 30 and 70 was the lowest passing score.  We
were taught formal American English spelling and punctuation and were
expected to use both in themes.  If we chose to do otherwise we would mark
our
error with an asterisk after the error.  Once in an argumentive theme that
egotists never cheated, I wrote
"More credible a blasphemous priest than a dishonest egotist!*"To make that
a complete sentence would have weakened it.  We were allowed to violate any
rules of composition as long as we put an asterisk to indicate that we knew
better.
-----Original Message-----
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Subject: ATEG Digest - 13 Apr 2011 to 14 Apr 2011 (#2011-81)

There are 11 messages totalling 9485 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Because? Awkward? Nah
  2. Punctuation question
  3. ATEG Digest - 13 Apr 2011 (#2011-80)
  4. Punctuation Question (7)
  5. Article of potential interest

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Date:    Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:32:51 -0400
From:    Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Because? Awkward? Nah

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Geoff,
     I believe I gave an example in my reply to Peter.
    "People have been abandoning their homes. In part because their=20
homes are worth less than they owe, they are doing so."
     "People have been abandoning their homes. They are doing so, in=20
part, because their homes are worth less than they owe."
    The first one seems awkward to me because the main clause is=20
entirely given information.
    If YOU believe opening with a because clause creates awkwardness,=20
why are you relying on us for examples? I believe that's what confused=20
us (and frustrated you.)
    It's more an issue of discourse than of strict syntax. The above=20
example works (for me) because decisions should fit the discourse=20
situation. Given and new are part of that.

Craig

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