Writers communicate meaning and intent with the words they use. There are, however, different ways of relating words that can only be communicated with a comma. Consider this example punctuation differences in a statement in a will from Albert Joseph’s guide “Put it in Writing!” (P. 210):

I hereby bequeath all of my worldly possessions to the first of my offspring, who lives a good life. (The first offspring is a nice kid.)

and

I hereby bequeath all of my worldly possessions to the first of my offspring who lives a good life. (One among the offspring may turn out nice, but it’s too early to tell which one.)

If one of the heirs contested the will because of the placement of the comma in the first example, the probate judge would need to know the rules of comma usage for restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses:

Comma usage before the “who” restricts focus to the first offspring
Omitting a comma renders the sentence open to future determination; it remains to be seen which of the offspring will live a good life.
Note: the probate judge might be especially grateful for the comma because the definition of a “good life” is also toxically ambiguous.

The comma checker guide, according to Albert Joseph

Albert Joseph, in his guide, promotes the use of commas during these seven situations:

To separate independent clauses in a compound sentence
To separate a conjunctive adverbs (nevertheless, however, therefore, furthermore, etc.) from the main clause of a sentence
To separate a long introductory phrase or clauses from the main clause of a sentence
To isolate nonrestrictive phrases, clauses, or appositives — see our opening example — from the rest of the sentence
To separate items in a series
To separate a quoted passage from the words used to introduce it
To force a pause in any group of words if the absence of a comma might cause readers to misread or create ambiguity

Rushang Shah

Noted

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