Write On!

• Citation: Vol. 38 No. 4 Pg. 66
• Publication year: 2015
• Pages: 66
• Year: 2015
• topic: Business of Law,Contracts,Civil Procedure

Write On! Vol. 38 No. 4 Pg. 66 Wyoming Bar Journal August, 2015

Michael R. Smith, Professor of Law, Director, Center for the Study of Written Advocacy, University of Wyoming College of Law

Commas and Phrases

In the April 2015 edition of this column, I wrote about the use of commas with dependent and independent clauses. In this edition, I write about a related area of comma confusion: the use of commas with introductory and interrupting phrases.

As I explained in the earlier article, a clause is a group of related words that contains a subject and a verb. A phrase, by contrast, is a group of related words that lacks a subject or a verb or both.^[1]

Commas and Long Introductory Phrases

Long introductory phrases at the beginning of a sentence should be set of by a comma. Tis rule makes sense for two reasons. First, placing a comma after the introductory phrase allows the reader to appreciate the structure of the sentence and to see where the main part of the sentence begins. Second, the comma represents a natural pause the reader will take in reading the sentence.

What constitutes a long phrase is a matter of...