except vs. without

mankey wrote:How is "spread in judicious amounts" placed between two commas justified here? It should be a restrictive clause.

Please help.

Thanks.

Hi mankey!

The thing about restrictive vs. non-restrictive clauses is that the choice to use either is 100% dependent on context and author intention. Let's look at 2 example sentences (both grammatically correct).

(a) The gift basket that is on the table is for our daughter's teacher. [RESTRICTIVE]

(b) The gift basket, which is on the table, is for our daughter's teacher. [NON-RESTRICTIVE]

Again, these are BOTH correct, but they have slightly different meanings. Let me try to paraphrase and see if that helps!

Scenario (a): There are likely several gift baskets in the room, but the ONE hat is on the table is the one meant for our daughter's teacher (who knows who will get the others).

Scenario (b): The gift basket it for our daughter's teacher - it just happens to be sitting on the table.

So really, it is up to the author to decide if the clause should be restrictive or not. In a room full of pairs of gloves, I might need to tell you "please hand me the gloves that are pink and black", but if there is only one pair of gloves in a room, I could easily have said "please hand me the gloves, which are pink and black" (because they are the only pair, the description is just extra).

What does that mean for those of us reading and judging GMAT sentences? We will never be forced to decide if a clause SHOULD be restrictive or non-restrictive. We will just need to decide if the clause has been formatted correctly:

(a) restrictive get NO commas while non-restrictive get offset by commas
(b) THAT is for restrictive and WHICH is for non-restrictive.

And that is about it!


Hope this helps clear it up!

Whit