Your four, and their commas
Read out your four sentences. The class calls out defining or non-defining from the punctuation alone, before hearing the meaning.
Then check: does the meaning agree with the commas? In published writing it always will. That is the evidence.
Eight ways of framing an opinion. Match each to what it signals.
Four opinions, four uses of the same grammar
Four short extracts from opinion writing
A: The people who complain loudest about the new parking scheme are the ones who drive least. That is not a coincidence and it is not hypocrisy — it is that the scheme, which was designed by a committee that has never had to park here, solves a problem those people do not have.
B: I say this as somebody who has worked in three schools that all had the same policy. The policy is not the problem. The problem is that nobody has ever asked the staff who administer it what it costs them, which is a question that takes about four minutes to answer.
C: The argument I keep hearing is that the buses would be full if they were free. To be fair to the people making it, that is what happened in one city where the scheme ran for a year. What nobody mentions is that the city, whose population is a quarter of ours, has eleven routes.
D: It is not that the report is wrong. It is that the report, which took eighteen months, answers a question nobody had asked, and the question everybody was asking is not in it.
Seven statements. Decide which extract each is true of. An extract may be the answer more than once.
A Extract A
B Extract B
C Extract C
D Extract D
1. Establishes the writer’s standing before making any claim.
2. Uses a possessive relative pronoun to introduce the decisive statistic.
3. Corrects a misreading of the argument before making it.
4. Characterises the people who hold a position, and denies that it is hypocrisy.
5. Concedes that the opposing evidence is real before limiting it.
6. Uses which to refer back to a whole clause rather than a noun.
7. Contains a relative clause inside another relative clause.
Say these aloud and listen to the pitch. The comma is audible.
My sister who lives in Porto is a doctor. — one continuous phrase, no break. The clause is welded to the noun.
My sister, who lives in Porto, is a doctor. — two small breaks, and the clause drops in pitch, like an aside.
A non-defining clause is said the way a bracket is written. If you say it flat, your listener hears the defining version and quietly concludes you have several sisters.
What relative clauses buy an argument
Four jobs in opinion writing
| Job | Shape | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Say precisely which thing you object to | Defining | The people who complain loudest are the ones who drive least. |
| Add the damaging detail without stopping | Non-defining | the scheme, which was designed by a committee that has never had to park here, |
| Comment on a whole statement | , which + clause | …what it costs them, which is a question that takes four minutes to answer. |
| Establish standing | as somebody who… | I say this as somebody who has worked in three schools. |
| Introduce a decisive fact about a thing | whose | the city, whose population is a quarter of ours, |
Four clauses have been removed from this argument. Put each back where it belongs.
The consultation ran for six weeks over the summer. [1] Four hundred people responded, which sounds like a lot until you learn that the catchment is ninety thousand.
The document itself is thirty pages long. [2] The four pages that matter are at the back, after the appendices.
[3] That is not an accusation of bad faith. It is an observation about what happens when a process is designed by people who will not be affected by its outcome.
What nobody has asked is the only question worth asking. [4]
Folding sentences together
One to three words per gap. Some gaps want a pronoun, some want a pronoun and a comma.
The committee designed the scheme has never had to park here. The scheme was designed in about four meetings, solves a problem the street does not have. The councillor ward it covers voted for it twice. And the one consultation was held closed on the day the schools went back is either careless or convenient.
Six pairs. Match each sentence to what it tells you about the world.
Fold it into three
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 5 minutes each
Your description from Lesson 1. Your partner counted the sentences. Now halve that number.
The same content, in half as many sentences, using relative clauses to fold them.
- Open with a defining clause that identifies the person.
- At least two non-defining clauses, said with the pitch drop.
- At least one , which commenting on a whole statement.
- Your partner counts the sentences again and says the two numbers back.
Listener’s second job. For every non-defining clause you hear, decide whether you heard the pitch drop. Say afterwards which ones sounded defining.
A non-defining clause said flat is a different sentence, and out loud that is the only thing marking it.
From the descriptions
Five sentences from the task. Fix each.
1. My manager, that hired me, left last year.
2. She was a person which had time for everybody.
3. The advice, that she gave me, still works.
4. He left in 2011 what I did not know until later.
5. The colleague who her desk was next to mine taught me most.
The comma is audible
Two questions.
1. The students, who failed, will resit in June. How many failed?
2. How is a non-defining clause marked in speech?
Before next lesson. Write six sentences about your work or study: three defining, three non-defining. Punctuate them, then hand them to somebody and ask what each one claims.
Next lesson we build both properly, including the two things a defining clause lets you leave out.