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Consider this sentence:

I think if you give some more info regarding what you're "trying to implement", that might help.

I have the following questions:

  1. Where should the commas go? (AmEng and BrEng)
    Please include complete sentence examples with comma(s).
  2. What grammatical element is "that might help"?
  3. What does "that" refer to?

Also, this sentence seems grammatically complicated. What is the "core sentence"? For example, "The brown dog that ate the sandwich jumped on top of the car." can be reduced to a core sentence, "The dog jumped."

1 Answer 1

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Generally, the comma would be inside the quotation mark in American English and outside in British English (in that only punctuation belonging to the quote belongs inside the quote marks). But this can depend on which style guide you prefer.

"that" here is a demonstrative pronoun. A demonstrative pronoun replaces a noun - in this case, the thing that you're trying to implement.

Put more simply, the sentence means "It would help if you further explained what it is you are trying to implement" --> "Explain (more about) what you want to implement."

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  • Could you please include complete sentence examples with comma(s)? (I have added that request to my main question now as well.) Mar 5, 2014 at 4:16
  • Only mostly true on the AmEn rule about commas inside quotes. When the quotes indicate a title, such as the name of a book or play, you would put the comma outside the quotes. Mar 5, 2014 at 9:17

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