When to Put a Comma Before Because

[Brett Linette]

"While I thought about deducting a star for homophobia, because nothing homophobic is blatantly stated, I'm going to give the author the benefit of the doubt and say that she's not homophobic."

In the sentence above, can I place a comma before "because," or would that be grammatically incorrect?

Looking back, I should have just written the sentence in question as follows.

"I thought about deducting a star for homophobia. Because nothing homophobic is blatantly stated, I'm going to give the author the benefit of the doubt and say that she's not homophobic."

Because I decided to reduce the first sentence to a dependant clause by opening it with a subordinating conjunction, shouldn't I finish said dependant clause off with a comma so as to differentiate it from the following dependant clause?

I think it's also worth noticing that the following dependant clause is a nonrestrictive clause, meaning that it doesn't need to be in the sentence for the rest of the sentence to make sense, and if nonrestrictive clauses that come in the middle of a sentence require a comma before and after them like I've been taught, then a comma should be placed before "because" for this reason alone.

What do you guys think? Should I have placed a comma before "because" or not?

[MsH2k]

I think your sentence is grammatically correct as written. It's a complex sentence: one independent clause and at least one dependent clause. The sentence would make sense without the "because" clause (making it nonrestrictive), so the comma is correct. Another way of looking at it, but arriving at the same conclusion, is the "because" clause is a second dependent clause, which still would require a comma before and after it in this case. This link has more information: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writ ... ments.html

[Umesh Bhatt]

The string 'because nothing homophobic is blatantly stated' in the first paragraph would surely require a comma before as well as after. I perceive it as correct.

[Samuel Mamo]

It is correct, because in your context you need to connect the first independent clause with comma with the second and the third clauses. As the sentence is compound of three, if you use a fullstop instead of comma, you could loose the connection between the first clause.