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www0935
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 173
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 Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 5:25 am Post subject: A question about punctuation (,) |
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The following is my question:
Recent studies on whales have revealed that, they, like humans, also have emotions.
Can the comma behind that be ommitted? Please help me out. Thanks a lot. |
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contra10
Joined: 11 Oct 2011
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 8:33 am Post subject: Re: A question about punctuation (,) |
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| www0935 wrote: |
The following is my question:
Recent studies on whales have revealed that, they, like humans, also have emotions.
Can the comma behind that be ommitted? Please help me out. Thanks a lot. |
Do you mean the comma behind they? meaning the comma in between that and they. It could be but for aesthetics reasons I would form my sentence like "Recent studies on whales have revealed that like humans, whales also have emotions"
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Mary W. Ng
Joined: 26 Jun 2006
Posts: 261
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| Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 9:37 am Post subject: Re: A question about punctuation (,) |
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Question:
The following is my question:
Recent studies on whales have revealed that, they, like humans, also have emotions.
Can the comma behind that be ommitted?
Answer:
The comma after "that" should be deleted. Words or phrases enclosed in commas are usually considered parenthetical. If you take out "they", the sentence does not make sense.
The sentence should read:
"Recent studies on whales have revealed that they, like humans, also have emotions."
The sentence still makes sense when "like humans" is removed. Here the prepositional phrase "like humans" gives extra information about the pronoun "they".
contra10's suggestion is great.
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Mary W. Ng
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