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Anonymous Posted 16 years ago
Grammar

Both with or without commas correct?

Hi. I think I find it hard (maybe due to my limited knowledge on this area of grammar), in mainly certain sentential cases involving some adverbial and subordinate clauses, to clear see whether a comma is needed or not. I tried to look at the context to decide on the correctness of of the likes of the sentences containing sentence elements mentioned previously, but more often than not, confusion follows/ensues my effort. Would you say that in certain sentences cases involving some adverbial and subordinate clauses (and possibly some involving prepositional phrases), there might not be "hard" rules (are there "hard" rules governing these types of comma cases? I am not sure I have laid out clearly what the types of cases they are or even what I am trying to ask specifically) that we have to follow (or should rely on?)?

Cases in points: I find hard to know whether to place commas or not before what I think are a subordinate clause (in no. 2 and 3) and prepositional phrase (in no. 1). Would you say we can either put commas or not put commas in the three example sentences below and that would be correct?

For all the sentences below,I feel you can either put a comma before the the underlined parts.

1. (made-up definition of some sort) Let us assume the letters "XXX" represent the name of a certain animal and the letters "ZZZ" and "QQQ" represent the names of certain animals. Also, let us assume "YYY" represents the name of a continent like "Africa."

XXX is a herbivore living mainly in YYY, such as ZZZ and QQQ.

2. John gave in to his desire to have a bowlful of hot vegetable soup in front of him, eventhough he had a big dinner at at Joe's house early in the evening.

3. Many thought since John had proven himself clearly that he is quite good at math by getting A's in his math classes for the last (past or previoius - OK?) three some years, he would score high on this test too, regardless whether he had studied hard for this one or not.
  

Top answer

2. John gave in to his desire to have a bowlful of hot vegetable soup in front of him, even though he had eaten a big dinner at at Joe's house early in the evening. 3.

  • 2.
  • John gave in to his desire to have a bowlful of hot vegetable soup in front of him, even though he had eaten a big dinner at at Joe's house early in the evening.
  • 3.
  • Many thought that, since John had proven himself clearly that he is quite good at maths by getting A's in his maths classes for the last three years, he would score high on this test too, regardless of whether he had studied hard for this one or not.
  • I agree you should have a comma before your underlined parts, though I would have some other small corrections in other places.
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1 Answers
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2. John gave in to his desire to have a bowlful of hot vegetable soup in front of him, even though he had eaten a big dinner at at Joe's house early in the evening.
3. Many thought that, since John had proven himself clearly that he is quite good at maths by getting A's in his maths classes for the last three years, he would score high on this test too, regardless of whether he had studie

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