Re: USAGE: What to do about punctuation?

"David J. Peterson" wrote:

> Mark wrote:
>
> <<Those of you who have created your own scripts, what have you done
> punctuationwise?>>
>
> My impression of punctuation systems has been this:
>
> There seems to be two types of design principles behind the different
> types of punctuation, and they can often come into conflict.  The one
> is punctuation that reflects the grammatical structure of the
> language.  This is the thought behind language that, for example,
> require a comma before all subordinate clauses (Esperanto does this;
> the Spanish I was taught; the German I was taught).  English has an
> old rule whereby they say you're always supposed to put a comma before
> "which" (e.g., "The man that I saw" is fine, but "The man which I saw"
> is not; needs a comma after "man", according to the rule).
>
In English, if the first clause is the subordinate one, it is followed
by a comma. No comma is used between clauses if the main clause starts a
sentence.
The subordinate clause starts with a conjunction.

Because I was late, I missed the bus.
I was late because I missed the bus.

(also see my explanation which has two sentences with if clauses)

The man which I saw is  wrong not because of lack of commas but because
in modern standard English* which is not used for people; that and
who/whom are used for people.

Rule: no commas: the relative clause is essential information about the
subject/object.
that, which, who, whom, whose can be used in essential information
clauses. When referring to things, that is more usual than which, but
which is not ungrammatical.

The book that/which is required is very expensive.

Rule: commas: the relative clause is additional information about the
subject/object
that cannot be used in this type of relative clause, but the other
relative pronouns can

This book, which is not the one I meant to buy, is very interesting.

*Other dialects vary of course, including the use of what as a relative
pronoun.

The letter what she sent.

David Barrow