I've been proofreading a friend's thesis, and I've encountered an issue. Punctuation is really friggin' hard, and I can't always figure out whether a sentence needs a comma, so I tried learning more about the issue by looking into the hard rules on when to use a comma and when not to.
According to what I read online, if two independent clauses (groups of words that can be placed out of context while staying correct) are joined together, you are to add a comma in between. For example: "I went to the mall, but forgot to get socks." The thing that I've been struggling with is identifying whether a clause is dependent or independent in practice. For example this following sentence:
"The amount of earners whose earnings are imputed make up less than 1% of the sample for virtually all years after 1951, and it can therefore be concluded that the data for the bottom 99% is of high quality and can be used for mobility measures."
"The amount of earners whose earnings are imputed make up less than 1% of the sample for virtually all years after 1951." This sentence seems like a fairly clear case of an independent clause, as it can easily be seen as its own sentence.
However, the second part of the sentence is in a bit of a gray area for me. "It can therefore be concluded that the data for the bottom 99% is of high quality and can be used for mobility measures."
At first this part seemed like an independent clause as well, but then I spotted the "therefore". "Therefore" refers to another sentence, so it wouldn't really work out of context... Or would it?
So, my question is: Is the second part of the sentence an independent or a dependent clause, and why? And does the sentence require a comma after 1951? I hope someone with some knowledge in this subject can help me with this. Thanks for your time.
I'd like some help regarding dependent and independent clauses in English
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Re: I'd like some help regarding dependent and independent clauses in English
I have also asked this question here: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... b58b7decce
And I've gotten some very useful answers. If you share this problem, be sure to head over there and check out the comments.
And I've gotten some very useful answers. If you share this problem, be sure to head over there and check out the comments.