ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: conjunctive adverb and comma

Mr Wordy — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:48:18 GMT

I'm sorry ... it's my fault I'm sure, but I don't understand the question. I hope that someone else will be able to help you!

All I can offer is that the following forms, and others similar, don't look right to me:

... no longer self-supporting and in addition, it seems unlikely that it will ever be self-sufficient

... no longer self-supporting and thus, the decision to end it came about.

Re: conjunctive adverb and comma

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:26:33 GMT

Thank you so much.

I think you can add the conjunction 'and' to it to no. 1 and my argument is that that seems to be the typical case with conjunctive adverbs, not the practice of not putting a comma before conjunctive adverbs used below, ie, for example and namely.

1. ... no longer self-supporting, hence the decision to end it.
2cNo. 1 could be like this.
1. ... no longer self-supporting and hence, the decision to end it came about.

I think most of conjunctive adverbs seem to follow the above pattern:
borrowing from above sentence:
... no longer self-supporting and therefore came about a decision to end it.
... no longer self-supporting and in addition to it, it seems unlikely that it will ever be self-sufficient.

But these are not restricted to the pattern noted but seems that it can act like a subordinate clause.

2. Here in Denver, for example, ridership was up 8 percent ...
3. ... could lead to a less-stringent step, namely requiring selllers to ...
4. ...admitted that the collaboration unforeseen events, namely a sudden gaping hole in the main-stage season.
5. ... make a decision on what to do with Rivers and thus, challenged ...

Why is that?

Re: conjunctive adverb and comma

Mr Wordy — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:48:49 GMT

#5 looks wrong to me.

The others look fine as far as the punctuation is concerned (though #4 seems to have suffered from some kind of transcription error).

You can tell that I don't really understand the question!

Edit: In fact, the original version of #5 seems to be "Eventually, an impatient stewardess demanded authorities make a decision on what to do with Rivers and, thus challenged, put him back on the plane" which looks correct to me punctuation-wise (parenthetical), though I don't actually understand what the sentence is supposed to mean and I think it might be structurally flawed in some other way.

I also realised later that the punctuation you wrote for #5, though it looks unlikely in the fragment you quoted, could be correct as it stands if the surrounding parts of the sentence are filled in appropriately.

conjunctive adverb and comma

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:36:19 GMT

Hi,
I think there are many conjunctive adverbs and some are noted here. But what baffles me the use of a comma before certain conjunctive adverbs and tag what looks to be parenthetical phrases. I feel only certain conjunctive adverbs are allowed? to have such a structure, whereas most of them don't. Why is that?
Some tidbits from the New York Times Search:
1. ... no longer self-supporting, hence the decision to end it.
2. Here in Denver, for example, ridership was up 8 percent ...
3. ... could lead to a less-stringent step, namely requiring selllers to ...
4. ...admitted that the collaboration unforeseen events, namely a sudden gaping hole in the main-stage season.
5. ... make a decision on what to do with Rivers and thus, challenged ...
If you look at no. 5, it has the conjunction 'an' and 'thus' comes after it. I feel most, if not all, conjunctive adverbs can acustom themselves to this type of structure, but no. 1 though 4 seem to have one more way to avail themselves apart from most other conjunctive adverbs. Why it that? What do I habve to do to learn to punctuate and write properly?