A Sentence Ending in Briefly

Hi,

The smell follows them inside, when they reenter their shuttle while in orbit, but remains only briefly.

Ending in briefly is fine.

Piling in the 'when' clause followed by the 'while' clause is a little awkward. It would help to put a comma as shown.

Hey, Clive, I'm rehashing this old one, because, given what I've learned recently, I was wondering if you could tell me if that sentence I was asking you about is actually grammatically incorrect, given "but remains only briefly" is a dependent clause, and a comma only comes before "but" when starting an independent clause. I just wanted to make sure with you.

Thanks.

Hi,

The smell follows them inside when they reenter their shuttle while in orbit, but remains only briefly.

This is not incorrect.

Clive

Hi,

Well, that's good, but what about the rule of not putting a comma before "but" unless "but" starts off an independent clause?

CliveHi,I've lived my life without being aware of such a simplistic 'rule', and not had my prose criticized unduly Clive.

Really? Wow. I've spent a good chunk of my day reading different sites about this so-called rule. So I guess a comma before "but" in the following example is okay too, then:

"That's like saying we made the device to amuse us, but n