Punctuating Single Independent Clauses
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Sentences can be analyzed as single independent clauses with or without attachments or as multiple independent clauses with or without attachments. With a single independent clause, possible attachments create three patterns: pre-clausal, post-clausal, and medial. In each case, the writer must decide: Do I punctuate or don’t I? [See Table 3.] In Pattern III the interruption may of course occur elsewhere within the independent clause.
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Three of the four “rules” required by this principle-based approach to punctuation are needed to punctuate these patterns (rules that literate students will know or quickly learn without instruction). [See Table 4.]
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As these tables indicate, the writer has choices, so there arises the question of how one goes about making these choices. The answer, theoretically, is simple, for it is found in anyone’s principle of good writing; that is, it is found in the effort to get sentences to say what one means with the kind of emphasis one intends. The principle is general. All writers, evidently, want a sentence to say what they intend it to say. It is, of course, the same principle that guides choices among word and syntactic options; one chooses among the options the best one can. A little imaginative effort will suggest how, in the following examples, choices might be made according to “meaning and intended emphasis” (Summey 4):
Table 3
Patterns
| I | (word/phrase/clause) + pct? + John laughed aloud. |
| II | John laughed aloud + pct? + (word/phrase/clause). |
| III | John + pct? + (word/phrase/clause) + pct? + laughed aloud. |
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Table 4
Rules
| Rule 1 (for Pattern I) | Only zero, comma, dash, or colon are permissible. |
| Rule 2 (for Pattern II) | All functional marks are permissible. |
| Rule 3 (for Pattern III) | Only paired marks (commas, dashes, zeros, and parentheses) are permissible. |
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(13) Surely (zero, comma, dash) the kid will come clean.
(14) The kid will come clean (any functional mark) and go home for a good night’s sleep.
(15) The kid (zero, comma, dash, parenthesis) who has a guilty conscience (zero, comma, dash, parenthesis—each paired with the first) will come clean.
In ordinary contexts, one would expect the following:
(16) Today John went to school.
But one can easily create a context (John having been hospitalized for a year) which suggests:
(17) Today, John went to school.
The non-independent clause element in Pattern I might, of course, be greatly expanded:
(18) When Mary sat at her desk and gave careful attention to it and decided, finally, that John wasn’t as foolish as he had acted, she...
But the principle is the same: meaning and emphasis.
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For pattern II the problem is the same—does one want to mark a separation at the boundary or not? And the principle that guides the decision maker is, again, the same:
(19) John wanted the money (pct?) which he was owed.
(20) John wanted the money (pct?) which was right for him.
(21) John wanted the money (pct?) thinking he’d take Mary to dinner.
(22) John wanted the money (pct?) even though he hadn’t earned it.
For pattern III, the problem is different only in that the choice is “two marks or none”:
(23) The student (pct?) who was too sick to play (pct?) watched on TV.
(24) The candidate (pct?) deemed unfit for public office (pct?) won 70% of the vote.
Insertions in Pattern III can, of course, occur elsewhere: The candidate won 70% (pct?) according to his figures (pct?) of the vote.