Essential and non-essential
phrases
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An ESSENTIAL PHRASE is a word
or group of words critical to the reader's understanding of what
the author is trying to get across.
EXAMPLE: We read the award-winning
book "Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry."
The essential phrase here is
the entire sentence. There are many award-winning books so the
reader must know which one the writer means.
* The ESSENTIAL PHRASE shouldn't be seperated by a comma because
without the name of the book the reader wouldn't know which book
was meant.
A NONESSENTIAL PHRASE provides
more information about something. Although the information may
be helpful to the reader's understanding, the reader would not
be misled if the information were not there.
EXAMPLE: We read the 1982 New
Berry Award winning book, "Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry."
Since only one book won the award
that year (let us assume that) it is a NONESSENTIAL PHRASE. If
the name of the book was excluded the meaning of the sentence
would not be changed.
* The NONESSENTIAL PHRASE does need to be set off by commas.
Do not confuse punctuation rules
for nonessential clauses with the correct punctuation when a nonessential
word is used as a descriptive adjective.
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