Rules That Aren't Rules

My name is Mary, and I'm an instructor from Austin. I have taught everything from middle school (all core subjects for 3.5 years) to undergraduates in college in grammar, writing, and anything to do with the English language for the past 9 years. Today, I'm going to talk a little bit about the secret lives of three specific building blocks of a sentence: a word, a clause, and a punctuation mark. As you may have guessed from the title of this post, the word is "because," the clause is the dependent clause, and the punctuation mark is the comma. Don't be frightened if you don't know what a dependent clause is yet--that will all be explained in just a moment.

But the first thing's first: why are these facts about grammar secrets? First and foremost, a lot of the information you have been taught about using these marks and grammar generally is wrong. Some of the "rules" you learned in school aren't real rules of grammar at all. I'm not saying that you teachers lied to you on purpose or that all teachers spread misinformation about grammar, but many teach rules that don't truly exist for the sake of simplifying lessons in a large classroom setting. For instance: Some teachers do not allow students to use "said" in their written dialogue. This isn't because "said" is gramatically incorrect; rather, the teacher wants the students to be more creative with their word choices and not always default to using "said" when another word is more appropriate. For instance, both of these sentences are gramaticallly correct, but one expresses speaker's emotion more clearly. I bet you can figure out which one:

Mike said, "Give me back my ball!"
Mike shouted, "Give me back my ball!"

The teacher who bans "said" from dialogue may give students the impression that using "said" is wrong, however, that teacher's intentions are good--to expand the students vocabulary and help them make more clear word choices.

Mythbusting: Because, Clauses, and Conjunctions
Similarly, did you ever have a teacher tell you you can't start a proper sentence with the word "Because"? That's not at all true. You absolutely can, and I'll provide you with an example. To be clear in my examples for the rest of this post, I will label them either "Correct" or "Wrong."

Correct: 'Because I lost my keys, I had to take a taxi.

That is a complete sentence. Go ahead and check. It has two clauses, each with a subject and verb. All you need for a complete sentence is a subject and a verb. "I lost" is just as complete sentence as the example above. Getting back to the example, "Because" is acceptable because it forms a dependent clause ("Because I lost my keys), which when followed by the comma provides more information about the main independent clause ("I had to take a taxi"). Using this example, let's quickly define the difference between a dependent and independent clause.

Quick Tip: Dependent clauses at the beginning of sentences are ALWAYS followed by a comma. The comma introduces the main clause. Another example may help to illustrate this point.

Correct: Because my father is leaving town tomorrow, he has to pack his luggage tonight.

The sentences I've given in these examples can also be reversed or rewritten to avoid "because" being at the beginning. However, if we keep the meaning exactly the same, the word "because" will still introduce a dependent clause. But here is where things get interesting: look at the rewritten sentences below and see what happens with the commas that were in the examples given above.

Correct: I had to take a taxi because I lost my keys
Correct: My father has to pack his luggage tonight because he is leaving town tomorrow.

Did you catch it? The commas disappear! This is a hard and fast rule of commas and dependent clauses. When the dependent clause comes first, it is followed by a comma. However, when the independent clause comes first, you do not introduce the dependent clause with a comma. The sentence you just read brings up another point: "because" is not the only word that introduces a dependent clause. I just introduced one with "when." This image shows some other words you can use to introduce a dependent clause. These words are also called "subordinating conjunctions"--which makes sense, because "subordinate" and "dependent" both mean "relying on something else."




The Big Secret: Why You Were Told the Big "Because" Myth
So we have talked about why teachers sometimes take short-cuts or invent rules that aren't rules. Sometimes they are even blameless in the process and are merely repeating fake rules that they themselves were taught in school or college. So just like the "rule" about "said" that we discussed above, the often repeated "Never begin a sentence with 'Because'" myth also likely has origins in the good intentions of teachers. One big problem in English Grammar, for both native and non-native speakers, is sentence fragments. We talked above about how complete sentences require a subject and a verb, and about how dependent clauses (triggered by the words above and by "because") can't stand on their own. Dependent clauses *depend* on independent clauses; an independent clause can stand on its own as a sentence. Consider when you were first learning to write--you probably used a lot of very short sentences that didn't even have commas yet. Maybe a beginner student would write something like the following example:
WRONG: Today my mom and I went to a movie. Because it was raining.


Did you catch which of those sentences was incorrect? If you guessed the second one, you're right. That second sentence is incorrect because it is a sentence fragment--it's a dependent clause posing as a sentence. Think for a moment about how you could rewrite that sentence to mean the same thing without the grammatical errors. Consider how you might do it in a single sentence. Think about it for a moment, because there are actually two ways one could do it.
I'll give you the answers now, but I do encourage you to solve it yourself. All right, the possibilities are:


Correct: Today my mom and I went to a movie because it was raining.
AND
Correct: Because it was raining today, my mom and I went to a movie.

Sentence fragments are common in conversation, but they are a big no-no in formal writing. A sentence fragment in a college admissions essay could mean the difference between exception and rejection. So teachers, in an effort to discourage use of sentence fragments, will ban beginning sentences with certain words like "And" and "Because" in their classrooms. Unfortunately, this can become so hardwired that some people never un-learn the mythical rule. If you'd like to see how hard it is to avoid using sentence fragments, try learning the basics of a foreign language and having a conversation. Initially, it is very difficult to speak and write in complete sentences. If you've been able to put all this information together, then surely you can take the challenge. If you are in the Austin area, I can introduce you to the fascinating worlds of French, German, and Introductory Spanish.

Wow! That was a lot of information to digest. If you made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back because you have mastered way more English Grammar concepts in the course of busting that one myth about because--and probably also picked up some new grammar vocabulary along the way--than you might have imagined when you began reading. What are some other myths that you learned in school?  Would you be curious to do some more mythbusting? Even if you're not sure a rule really is a rule, if you are skeptical, then always investigate when someone tells you your grammar is "wrong." They may just be parroting  their gradeschool teacher, who in turn may have been parroting somebody else. I suspect the use of the word "rule" in grammar perpetuates these myths--the teachers aren't to blame, almost everybody these days considers themselves a grammar authority whether they've studied the subject extensively (or in my case, gotten an entire degree in Rhetoric and Writing!) or not. People repeat what they hear, and once they've repeated it enough they believe it and sometimes even enforce it as gospel truth. We all know self-appointed Grammar Police. My recommendation? Next time you encounter such a person, do your own research, ask a real expert, or check out some of the other blogs here on Frog Tutoring to see if you can't find the real truth. The truth is always more interesting than the fake rule.