Monday 4 January 2016

grammar - Is it necessary to use the comma in the following sentence?

It's not a matter of necessity; it's a matter of whether you wish to conform to the style recommended in your manual of style. I use the Chicago Manual of Style, which recommends that dependent clauses that follow an independent clause be set off by a comma if and only if the dependent clause is non-restrictive, i.e, if it's informational only instead of definitional.



Your example seems non-restrictive: you've merely added an interesting story to your swimming holiday. Here's a restrictive example:




Do you remember that swimming holiday when a crocodile suddenly
attacked us?




Now the clause distinguishes that time when you went swimming from all the other, less eventful times. So no comma.



Punctuation is a matter of style, not a matter of life and death, like swimming in a crocodile-infested lake.

No comments:

Post a Comment