"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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