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Trey Piepmeier

The Elements of Style

William Strunk, E. B. White

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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.

jnonfiction replies...

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"

trey replies...

Thanks, Joshua. That makes sense now.

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A book that will help any writer become a better writer.

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Reader tags: 2009, editing, english, grammar, guide, nonfiction, punctuation, style, writing

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