I'm lost with punctuation - commas??

[KatyMac]

I thought it was:

"We are fairly sure, as a family, that ...."

But WORD wants to change it to:

"We are fairly sure, as a family that ......"

I thought if you could remove the clause completely you should use 2 commas?

Or is it only 1?

Not sure, but I suspect that Word is looking at that 'that' after your second comma and assuming that because it is 'that' instead of 'which', the comma must be wrong. It isn't, obviously, it's just Word being a 'puter and not an intelligent life form.

I reckon.

It should be 2 in your example, you're right. Word makes some odd choices - it may think you want to carry on "as a family that does x y and z" before the second comma.

How about:

"As a family, we are fairly sure that ..."

But I THINK your version is 'more correct' than Word's.

Thanks

It's hard writing 'properly'

When does Word do it? You might be going on to say "We are fairly sure, as a family that believes in scrupulous adherence to the rules of grammar, ..."

Just a thought. I don't really know why I am coming to the defence of this piece of American software. Just wondering.

If offers

family that

or

family, which

Time to disable this piece of checking, and go on instinct

KatyMac

You are completely right. Word is confusing itself because of the conjunction - I imagine it is allowing you 'which' because it 'thinks' it's the beginning of a conditional clause. Pay no attention and trust yourself.

You can always re-order your sentence and move the verbs and conjunctions around but you don't need to.

Feel proud that you were right.

Thanks