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As far as I know, I can reduce sentence one to sentence two.

1- My brother Ben, who lives in Hong Kong, is an architect.

2- My brother Ben, living in Hong Kong, is an architect.

But I often see these kind of sentences :

3- Henoch-Schonlein purpura (HSP) is a disease involving inflammation of small blood vessels.

I think this sentence(3) is a reduction from this one(4).

4- Henoch-Schonlein purpura (HSP) is a disease which involves inflammation of small blood vessels.

And I suppose that the relative clause above is a non-defining relative clause, so I should use a comma. Correct?

5- Henoch-Schonlein purpura (HSP) is a disease, involving inflammation of small blood vessels.

Long story short, shouldn't sentence three contain a comma before "involving" ? (as I used in sentence five)

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  • The presence (or lack) of a comma is determined by whether or not you intend the information to be restrictive or nonrestrictive. It's up to you if you use one or not. (Barring situations where some people insist that something, by its nature, must be restrictive or nonrestrictive. But that doesn't apply here.) With this sentence, it's fine either way.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 14:04
  • Hmm, what about the first two sentences? In those sentences, using comma is up to me?
    – Talha Özden
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 14:12
  • Yes, it's your choice. If you want to make the information restrictive, then don't use a comma; if you want it to be nonrestrictive, then use a comma.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 14:13
  • 1
    Consider the difference between "My brother who lives in Hong Kong is an architect" and "My brother, who lives in Hong Kong, is an architect." For the first you're saying that it's your Hong Kong brother who is an architect. For the second you're saying that your brother is an architect, and he happens to live in Hong Kong.
    – Showsni
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 14:43

1 Answer 1

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Non-defining relative clauses tell us more about someone or something, but the information in these clauses does not help us to define what we are talking about (Education First).

In the sentence 3, if you want that the clause "involving inflammation of small blood vessels" is non-defining, you need to separate it with comma:

Henoch-Schonlein purpura (HSP) is a disease, involving inflammation of small blood vessels.

or

Henoch-Schonlein purpura (HSP) is a disease, which involves inflammation of small blood vessels.

If you omit the comma, the clause becomes defining:

Henoch-Schonlein purpura (HSP) is a disease involving inflammation of small blood vessels.

or

Henoch-Schonlein purpura (HSP) is a disease that involves inflammation of small blood vessels.

In defining clauses you usually use that instead of which.

From the medical viewpoint, you can't define Henoch-Schonlein purpura just by saying that it involves inflammation of small blood vessels, because there are other diseases that do the same. So, using a non-defining clause (with comma) is more appropriate, because it just gives some description of the disease.

I personally find the sentence with "which involves" much more clear than the one with "involving," though.

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