comma before present participle: eating from restaurants, featuring

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bluboks

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Korean
Enjoy eating and drinking from more than a hundred exceptional restaurants, featuring special dining, quaint casual cafes, and everything in-between!



Is it necessary to put a comma right before the participle phrase when it comes at the end of the sentence, following the main clause?

What differences would it make to omit the comma?

Furthermore, what is the agent noun of featuring? is it the noun phrase a hundred exceptional restaurants?
 
    • It doesn't. It's a matter of style. The so-called "Oxford comma" always comes before the conjunction in a series of items. I didn't go to Oxford, but that's the way I write too.
     
    Oeco said:
    It doesn't. It's a matter of style. The so-called "Oxford comma" always comes before the conjunction in a series of items. I didn't go to Oxford, but that's the way I write too.
    Click to expand...

    Oops, I should have made my question clear. My point is not those commas used for listing items, but that comma right before featuring, which splits the participle phrase from the main clause.

    Thanks for your attention, by the way.
     
    I'm sorry as well. I skipped over "participle phrase" in your question So, to that question, I would say that the comma is not needed.

    To your second question (if I may be allowed to answer two) the agent noun would be "restaurants."
     
    Mind if I asked a further question? In this case, which do you think is more preferable between putting a comma in that place or not? if what I've learned from my school is right, that comma is not tolerable so that it must be removed. But there's always the possibilities that it is me who is not right.
     
    I think I disagree. Without the comma, I would read it as "restaurants featuring special dining . . . " which I don't think is correct. (I don't think "restaurants" can feature "casual cafes.")

    I think it's the experience - the "eating and drinking" - that features those things, so I think the comma needs to be there.
     
    It would be helpful to know what this sentence does. As pob14 points out, the comma changes the meaning. Is this the heading for a list of restaurants?

    If you wrote it yourself, what do you want it do say? If you saw it somewhere else, where did you see it and what kind of writing was it?
     
    Actually, I've got this sentence from a question post on another website in which English learners of my country's communicate on various topics about the foreign language, like here. The author asked the same thing as I mentioned above. I don't know the exact source he got it from, but believe he has seen it from a kind of textbook or something like that.
     
    For the record, I see pob14's point. But I must then ask, what does the participle phrase "featuring special dining" modify? The comma before featuring separates the noun, restaurants, from what I believe to be its modifying participle phrase. Seems to me that the choices regarding the elements in the series are:

    (my reading without the comma before featuring)

    Enjoy eating and drinking from...
    restaurants featuring special dining
    quaint casual cafes,
    and everything in-between!

    (a reading with the comma)

    Enjoy eating and drinking from...
    restaurants,
    featuring special dining,
    quaint casual cafes,
    and everything in-between!

    How does one "enjoy eating and drinking...featuring special dining"

    my head hurts :p
     
    Last edited:
    Hi,

    Look at the following explanation:

    Note also that it is not usual in British usage to put a listing comma before the word and or or itself (though American usage regularly puts one there). So, in British usage, it is not usual to write
    The Three Musketeers were Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.
    This is reasonable, since the listing comma is a substitute for the word and, not an addition to it. However, you should put a comma in this position if doing so would make your meaning clearer:
    My favourite opera composers are Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, and Gilbert and Sullivan.
    Click to expand...

    source:http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk...ation/node10.html#SECTION00041000000000000000

    A&AJnr
     
    I'm sorry about your head, but with the comma I see it as the header to a list, with the understood reference to the restaurants in the list. It's not an example of fine writing, but it is the sort of thing you see in advertising.

    Enjoy eating and drinking from more than a hundred exceptional restaurants, [=the restaurants on the list below] featuring special dining, quaint casual cafes, and everything in-between!

    Abba Dabba Café
    Ms Brown's Kitchen
    La De Da Bar and Grill
    Ewie's Good Eats
    and so on, for 96 more.
     
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