The Elements of Style

By William Strunk, E. B. White

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Tom E. Spruce ▶ The Elements of Style

Note to self: the book can be found here: http://www.bartleby.com/141...

Thanks to this guy: http://readernaut.com/Phil/...

Comment · January 8, 2010

Trey Piepmeier ▶ The Elements of Style

I'm having a hard time making sense of this:

If a dependent clause, or an introductory phrase requiring to be set off by a comma, precedes the second independent clause, no comma is needed after the conjunction.

The situation is perilous, but if we are prepared to act promptly, there is still one chance of escape.

Can anyone explain that to me? Perhaps a drawing would help.

Comment · October 29, 2009

Sometimes it helps to rearrange the sentence. His point is that you need no comma after "but." The "but" is integral with "there is still one chance of escape," and the phrase "if we are prepared to act promptly" is intersecting them. So normally, if you pop a phrase or clause right in the middle of another one, you set it off fore and aft with commas. However*, since there's a preceding independent phrase, we've already set that area off, so another comma right after "but" would be overkill.

*or "but"

3y

Thanks, Joshua. That makes sense now.

3y

Trey Piepmeier read 3 pages in The Elements of Style

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Comment · October 29, 2009

Trey Piepmeier read 5 pages in The Elements of Style

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Comment · July 20, 2009

Kevin Tamura read 125 pages in The Elements of Style

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Comment · November 5, 2008

Andrew Wilkinson finished.

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Jeff Adams read 21 pages in The Elements of Style

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Jeff Adams read 8 pages in The Elements of Style

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