Does a pronoun (they) after "and" in a compound predicate sentence necessitate a comma before the "and"?

Question

I have a genuine problem. A compound predicate has one subject and two or more verbs. This is the guideline I am following.

Compound Predicate takes no comma when there are two verbs:

1. Michael dribbled across three defenders and passed the ball to his wide-open teammate.

Compound Sentence takes a comma and a conjunction:

2. Michael dribbled across three defenders, and he passed the ball to his wide-open teammate.

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This is the sentence I am having issues with:

Main Sentence: A. To qualify for fishing benefits, self-employed fishers must have paid premiums during their qualifying period and, depending on the regional unemployment rate, they must have earned between $2,500 and $4,200 in insurable earnings from fishing activities.

Repeating "they must have" requires I put a comma before "and" to make it a compound sentence. But then there are too many commas around "and".

If I reduce the verbiage, it should have the following form:

B. To qualify for benefits, workers must have paid premiums and earned between $2,500 and $4,200. (Compound predicate)

But if I wrote it as a compound sentence, it would include the comma before the conjunction.

C. To qualify for benefits, workers must have paid premiums, and they must have earned between $2,500 and $4,200. (Compound sentence)

Given there is this information after and "depending on the regional unemployment rate" that needs to be set of by a pair of commas, I felt that repeating "they must have" before earned made it easier to read. But then grammar requires me to put a comma before "and" (as is the case for a compound sentence with a coordinating conjunction).

How to punctuate sentence A ? Should I omit "they"?

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Please, don't close this. I have done a lot of research in ELU and ELL, but I did not find anything similar. While there are simple examples that talk about the rules of compound predicates, there isn't any that deals with complex structures like the one above.

Answer 1

Now, I don't know any theory to go with this. I'm just judging this by experience. Your sentence A is absolutely fine as far as I can see, with no comma before and. On the other hand, I agree that the examples in your rule are right, and whether it's a 'must' or a 'should', it's a rule worth following - whether you consider it a grammatical requirement or a stylistic one. So, that seems to be a contradiction, doesn't it?

Thing is, there's an extra complication in your sentence A. There's a parenthetical, immediately after the and. If you followed your rule, you'd have:

To qualify for fishing benefits, self-employed fishers must have paid premiums during their qualifying period, and, depending on the regional unemployment rate, they must have earned between $2,500 and $4,200 in insurable earnings from fishing activities.

Gosh, those two commas bracketing the 'and' are a bit awkward, aren't they? Well, we'd better get rid of one. But which one? We have to have one in order to separate the clauses with explicit subjects, and we have to have one for the parenthetical. How do the alternatives look?

self-employed fishers must have paid premiums during their qualifying period, and depending on the regional unemployment rate, they must have earned between $2,500 and $4,200

self-employed fishers must have paid premiums during their qualifying period and, depending on the regional unemployment rate, they must have earned between $2,500 and $4,200

The first has changed the meaning slightly. The first could be read the requirement depending on the regional unemployment rate - not just the size of the requirement, but the requirement at all.

We could remove the confusion, and move the parenthetical, of course:

To qualify for fishing benefits, self-employed fishers must have paid premiums during their qualifying period, and they must have earned between $2,500 and $4,200, depending on the regional unemployment rate, in insurable earnings from fishing activities.

That moves the parenthetical to immediate after what I assume it refers to, and you could do that. That might be enough for you, and if so I'm please. Still, that doesn't remove the question - why does sentence A seem fine, despite breaking the rule?

Now I'm only complete speculation. If that rule is stylistic, then it being broken occasionally is no surprise. If it's grammatical, there must be a reason for the exception. I think it might be like this...

The comma needs to create a separation between the first clause and the subject-verb-object of the second clause. You also need a conjunction (in this case). Having a conjunction followed by a comma would be against all expectations - except when there's a parenthetical there. The commas of the parenthetical create all the needed separation between the subjects-verbs-objects of each clause, so now you don't need the comma in front of the and.

Anyway, it's just an idea. The actual simplest rewrite to satisfy your rule is above, moving the parenthetical slightly later on in the clause.