{"id":1617,"date":"2014-08-19T11:14:49","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T17:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2020-11-25T10:54:15","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T16:54:15","slug":"essential-but-is-it-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/definitions\/essential-but-is-it-important\/","title":{"rendered":"Essential, but Is It Important?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commas are tricky little devils. Anyone who wants to use them correctly will at some point encounter the terms essential<\/em> and nonessential<\/em>. The rule is that so-called essential<\/em> elements should not be enclosed in commas. Conversely, nonessential<\/em> elements require commas fore and aft.<\/p>\n

By \u201celements\u201d we mean clauses, phrases, and even single words. Today we will focus on the difference between essential and nonessential clauses (a clause<\/em> always contains a subject and verb).<\/p>\n

Consider this sentence: People who stay out in the sun too long get a bad case of sunburn.<\/em> Note the lack of commas. That\u2019s because the clause who stay out in the sun too long<\/em> is essential. Without it the sentence is silly: People get a bad case of sunburn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Look at what happens if we fence off the essential clause with commas: People, who stay out in the sun too long, get a bad case of sunburn<\/em>. The commas isolate people<\/em> from the clause that explains which people we are talking about. That\u2019s as misguided as writing The book, I\u2019m reading, is good<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now look at this sentence: Barton Blain, who once threw a punch at the mayor, ate corn flakes for breakfast<\/em>. Unlike people <\/em>in the previous paragraph, Barton Blain<\/em> is already specifically identified. That makes the clause who once threw a punch at the mayor<\/em> nonessential, requiring commas.<\/p>\n

Do not be distracted by this usage of essential<\/em> and nonessential<\/em>. That Blain assaulted an elected official is certainly surprising, even alarming, but it is not essential<\/em> in the grammatical sense; it is added information, and its removal would not alter the sentence\u2019s basic point: that Blain had corn flakes for breakfast. Maybe the writer was being grimly humorous, or was trying to shock us, or\u2014who knows? Our only concern here is that the writer correctly used commas to set off a nonessential clause.<\/p>\n

So anyone who would master comma usage must realize that the terms essential<\/em> and nonessential<\/em> have nothing to do with values or ethics and everything to do with making a sentence say what its author intends.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pop Quiz<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are the following sentences punctuated properly? Answers are at the end of the newsletter.<\/p>\n

1. The carpenter, who fixed our floor, is the one I\u2019d recommend.
\n2. I\u2019m talking about Derek Jones who climbed Mount Whitney, not Derek Jones who swam the English Channel.
\n3. A ten-year-old girl, who doesn\u2019t obey her parents, is headed for trouble.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pop Quiz Answers<\/strong>
\n1. The carpenter who fixed our floor is the one I\u2019d recommend. (remove commas)
\n2. I\u2019m talking about Derek Jones who climbed Mount Whitney, not Derek Jones who swam the English Channel. (CORRECT)
\n3. A ten-year-old girl who doesn\u2019t obey her parents is headed for trouble. (remove commas)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commas are tricky little devils. Anyone who wants to use them correctly will at some point encounter the terms essential and nonessential. The rule is that so-called essential elements should not be enclosed in commas. Conversely, nonessential elements require commas fore and aft. By \u201celements\u201d we mean clauses, phrases, and even single words. Today we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commas","category-definitions","category-effective-writing"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}