Having trouble with commas

Question

I'm having a hard time figuring out when I should be separating my sentences with commas. Could someone please help me. Could someone please let me know if these need correction?

A passenger in a seat a few rows ahead of me announced to the other passengers that the World Trade Center has been hit by a plane.

In just moments, the sky was so full of debris that the beautiful sunshine, that had surrounded me moments before, had disappeared blanketed by the rain of debris.

BarbaraPA · Accepted Answer

AnonymousI'm having a hard time figuring out when I should be separating my sentences with commas. Could someone please help me. Could someone please let me know if these need correction?

A passenger in a seat a few rows ahead of me announced to the other passengers that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane.

In just moments, the sky was so full of debris that the beautiful sunshine, that had surrounded me moments before, had disappeared, blanketed by the rain of debris.

Anonymous · Answer

In just moments, the sky was so full of debris that the beautiful sunshine, that had surrounded me moments before, had disappeared, blanketed by the rain of debris.

Okay, this tricky.

In this sentence you have an adjective clause--that had surrounded me moments before~~that modifies a noun~~sunshine.

To know whether or not you need commas, you have to know whether the clause defines the noun or describes the noun.

If the clause defines the noun, it tells you which (noun), out of all the (nouns) in the world, you are talking about.

The girl that I marry will have to be as soft and as sweet as a nursery.

Which girl? The girl that I marry.

I'll regret it 'til the day that I die.

'Til which day? The day that I die.

In the U. S., a person who delivers mail is called a mail carrier.

Who is called a mail carrier? A person who delivers mail.

etc., etc., etc.

If the clause describes the noun, it gives you some additional information about the (noun) but it does not distinguish that (noun) from all the other (nouns) in the world.

The Olympic games, which were first held in 1890, take place every four years.

When I say the Olympic games you already know which games I'm talking about.
The clause which were first held... merely gives you some additional info about the games.

(BTW, I made that date up, so don't bother writing to me to tell me I got it wrong.)

June 1, 1989, which was the day I met him, is a day I will never forget.

There was only June 1, 1989, so the clause which was the day... doesn't define the day, it merely gives you some additional information about it.

Let's look at some more examples:

Mary Jones, who is the mayor of Casterbridge, announced that she would be running for re-election in November.

The Mary Jones who is the mayor of Casterbridge is not the same Mary Jones who lives next door to me.

The movie that was set in my home is called 20 Years in ****.

20 Years in ****, which is set in my hometown, is a great movie.

Now this may seem mysterious or complicated, but it's actually quite simple.

If you say a sentence with the second type of clause, you will automatically and unconsciously pause before you say the clause. That's why we put commas around it.

If you say a sentence with the first type of clause, you will not pause before you say the clause.

Now, what about your sentence?

You have two possibilities:

...the sky was so full of debris that the beautiful sunshine that had surrounded me moments before had disappeared....

or

...the sky was full full of debris that the beautiful sunshine, which had surrounded me moments before, had disappeared...

The two sentences would sound different.

The first one would go:
the beautiful sunshine that had surrounded me moments before had disappeared

The second one would go
the beautiful sunshine...which had surROUNDed me moments before... had disappeared

There's a difference in emphasis.

Try saying them out loud. Can you hear the difference?

Finally, please notice that we use the subordinator that with the first type of clause and the subordinator which with the second type of clause.

You can learn more by looking up restrictive and non-restrictive clauses.

The Linguist

Having trouble with commas

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