7 Cases for Inserting or Omitting Commas

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Here are discussions of seven types of situations in which the presence or absence of a comma depends on various factors.

1. Word Function

Whether a comma follows a word sometimes depends on the function of the word. For example, when now is employed at the head of a sentence to refer to the present time, there’s no reason to separate it from the rest of the statement: “Now you know.”

But when now serves as an interjection to mark a transition or attract someone’s attention, it should be set off: “Now, have you had dinner?” (That same series of words could be used in a temporal sense, though: “Now have you had dinner?” suggests that the writer is impatient with the person the question is directed to.)

2. Before Because

A sentence such as “I didn’t want to go because I hadn’t enjoyed myself last time” implies that the writer is explaining that the lack of enjoyment isn’t a factor in reluctance to attend an event; the reason for the reluctance will presumably follow.

But if the meaning is opposite — if the lack of enjoyment is the reason for the reluctance to attend — a comma should precede because to signal that what follows the comma is a dependent clause: “I didn’t want to go, because I hadn’t enjoyed myself last time” Alternatively, the dependent clause can begin the sentence: “Because I hadn’t enjoyed myself last time, I didn’t want to go.”

3. Apposition

An appositive is a word or phrase equivalent in meaning to an adjacent word or phrase, as in “She wrote to her brother, John”; “her brother” and “John” mean the same thing, so they are appositives, and the comma is necessary to set it off. However, if the woman has more than one brother, write “She wrote to her brother John.”

Similarly, in “I met the writer, Jane Doe,” the comma is correct only if the writer has been alluded to before without mention of her name. Otherwise, the comma between the appositives suggests that only one writer exists. (And that puts me out of a job.) Even if writer is modified, the meaning differs: “I met the mystery writer, Jane Doe” suggests a previous reference to two or more writers, only one of whom writes mysteries, whereas “I met the mystery writer Jane Doe” simply specifies the genre in which Jane Doe writes.

4. Relative Clauses

Commas may or may not be necessary, depending on whether each statement in an otherwise identical pair of sentences uses the word that or which: In “The house that Jack built is falling apart,” the phrase “that Jack built” is essential to the sentence, which specifies a particular house. In “The house, which Jack built, is falling apart,” the emphasis is on what is happening to the house, and the identity of the builder is a parenthetical, so the optional information should be bracketed by commas.

“The house which Jack built is falling apart,” without commas, is also correct; it is identical in meaning to “The house that Jack built is falling apart.” However, the convention in American English is to avoid using which in this sense to prevent confusion with the meaning of the sentence with the parenthetical phrase.

5. Short Introductory Phrases

Many people choose to omit a comma after introductory phrases of just a few words, as in “During the summer I like to travel.” However, such omission is arbitrary when such sentences are compared to those with longer introductory phrases — and wrong in the case of transitional tags like finally, furthermore, and unfortunately — and for the sake of consistency, a comma should follow any introductory word or phrase.

6. Short Independent Clauses

In brief sentences such as “I will sort and you can staple” that consist of two independent clauses (complete thoughts that could stand on their own as distinct sentences), writers often choose to omit the otherwise obligatory comma before the conjunction.

But just as in the case of short introductory phrases, there is the problem of where to draw the line. Does one establish a rule about how many words each clause must contain to dictate whether a comma is employed, or does one judge each sentence on its own? Let simplicity be your guide: Always include a comma.

7. Coordinate and Noncoordinate Adjectives 

When two or more adjectives sequentially modify a noun, depending on their relationship, they may or may not be separated by commas. To test whether to insert or omit commas, replace them with and. For example, “She was wearing a bright, cheerful expression” can also be written “She was wearing a bright and cheerful expression.” (The adjectives can be reversed in either case, too.)

However, “She was wearing a dark green blouse” cannot be rendered “She was wearing a dark and green blouse,” because dark and green describe the blouse in combination, whereas bright and cheerful separately describe the expression. Also, in this case, the adjectives cannot be reversed: “She was wearing a green dark blouse” is illogical because dark modifies green, not blouse. Therefore, no comma should separate the two terms.

5 Cases of “Which”/“That” Confusion

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Perhaps you are confused by grammatical discussions of restrictive and nonrestrictive — or essential or nonessential — clauses. (I know I can never keep those terms straight.)

Never mind the nomenclature; when you’re editing your own writing, or someone else’s, simply read the phrase that follows a which (or who) or a that and determine whether the phrase that follows is parenthetical (it can be removed with no change of meaning to the sentence) or it is integral to the sentence. Here are five sample sentences followed by explanation of the problem and a revision.

1. “The inventor of the Etch A Sketch toy that generations of children drew on, shook up, and started over, has died in France, the toy’s maker said.”
The use of that to serve as a grammatical bridge between the name of the product and the phrase describing how it was used implies that more than one type of product called the Etch A Sketch exists; the one that children used as described is, according to this sentence construction, one of two or more types.

When that is replaced with which, and which is preceded by a comma, the sentence structure makes clear that the existence of other Etch A Sketch products is not implied: “The inventor of the Etch A Sketch toy, which generations of children have drawn on and shaken up before starting over, has died in France, the toy’s maker said.” (Note, too, that I have altered the wording explaining how the toy is used and have changed the tense to indicate that the product is extant.)

2. “It was a time when tensions were growing between the black and Jewish communities that had previously been aligned in efforts to affect social change.”
The point of this sentence is not what had occurred between certain communities of black and Jewish people, but what the entire black and Jewish communities had experienced. The restrictive force of that must be replaced by the parenthetical purpose of a comma followed by which: “It was a time when tensions were growing between the black and Jewish communities, which had previously been aligned in efforts to affect social change.”

3. “Police are probing allegations of incidents involving the renowned astrophysicist who is paralyzed.”
The phrase “the renowned astrophysicist who is paralyzed” distractingly refers to the concept of astrophysicists who are not paralyzed. However, “who is paralyzed” is merely additional information appended to the factual statement, and should be attached with a comma followed by who (the equivalent of which): “Police are probing allegations of incidents involving the renowned astrophysicist, who is paralyzed.”

4. “The company’s incident-response team can quickly and reliably identify events, which threaten an organization’s security posture.”
Here and in the example below, the problem in the previous sentence is reversed: This statement implies that all events are threatening. Replacing the comma and which with that corrects that impression by restricting the meaning to refer specifically to threatening events: “The company’s incident-response team can quickly and reliably identify events that threaten an organization’s security posture.”

5. “The court ruled this week that a law passed last summer, which gave five top government-office holders immunity from prosecution, was illegal and must be revoked.”
This sentence construction suggests that the summer, rather than the law, granted immunity. Removal of the bracketing commas and replacement of which with that integrates the central point into the framing sentence: “The court ruled this week that a law passed last summer that gave five top government-office holders immunity from prosecution is illegal and must be revoked.”

Grammar-Checking Software Is Soft on Grammar Errors

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You want to improve your grammar, but you’re disinclined to invest time and energy to laboriously study print or online resources about sentence construction. You’ve seen ads on the Internet about grammar checkers, and you decide to check them out. How useful is grammar-checking software?

After visiting five grammar-checker websites and using (the free versions of) their products, my conclusion is that software is no substitute for wetware (otherwise known as your brain). Here are my brief reports about the software I sampled.

Grammarbase.com
Grammarbase.com fallaciously flagged “ought to be” and “may be” as examples of passive voice — a common misunderstanding of the topic. (Passive voice is a backward-facing construction such as “This sentence was written by me”; “I wrote this sentence” is the active alternative. Verb form is not the primary issue.) Worse, there were several real grammatical and syntactical errors in the site’s introductory text (which I used as a test sample for this and the other sites); the grammar-checking tool found none of them.

GrammarCheck.net
When I copied and pasted the sample text into GrammarCheck.net’s tool, it showed the same poor results as Grammarbase.com’s. However, when I clicked on the site’s Advanced Report button, it took me to . . .

Grammarly
Grammarly found nearly fifty errors (or, more accurately, instances of concern), mostly involving what the site terms “writing style,” in the introductory text taken from Grammarbase.com. (The free version did not specifically identify the errors.) When I then plugged in the raw, error-laden version of a copyediting test, it found fewer mistakes than revealed in the Grammarbase.com text but gave the test text a lower score.

PaperRater
PaperRater found no errors in Grammarbase.com’s text and only two in the text for the copyediting test — both concerning misuse of hyphens.

Spellcheckplus.com

Spellcheckplus.com was stymied by the phrase “not only should the structure of your writing be solid,” reminding me about noun-verb agreement (irrelevant in this case) and by the phrase “your basic default word processor grammar checker,” alerting me that if by using your I meant “you are,” it should read you’re (again, irrelevant).

However, it advised changing you’ll to “you will” and noted that a letter space should both precede and follow an ellipsis and that the first two words in “run on sentences” should be hyphenated — all valid but superficial corrections.

My tests were not rigorous, and I did not purchase any of this software — I merely took a test drive of each company’s freeware trial. However, the only difference I can see between the free and paid versions of these software products is that the paid versions not only flag your errors but also analyze them. The problem is that, whether in simple or advanced mode, these tools missed just about every error that matters in a grammatical review.

These tests confirmed my suspicion that grammar-checking software can at best note only the most elementary errors (and sometimes marks valid constructions as mistakes). Grammar is much too complicated and nuanced to trust to technology. If you want to write well, learn to write well. If you want to have your writing reviewed and evaluated, access the brain of another human being. But don’t even think of relying on software.