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Are both of the following sentence correct? Or is one of them incorrect?

"There are some problems, as well."

"There are some problems as well."


In other words, is the comma before the phrase "as well" (1) required, (2) optional, or (3) grammatically incorrect?

I believe it is required.

You don't "hear" what should be a natural pause when you skip the comma.

I believe it's a judgement call. It is not required. When you are writing the sentence, do you mean the as well as an aside to the audience? In that case, you would add the comma. If not, you don't need it. There are several websites that talk about this as well, though I'm not sure how scholarly they are.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/as-well-as-comma/

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/educa ... -comma-too (That is the same kind of issue, but it uses the word too instead of as well.)

While not a definitive answer according to grammar rules, checking Corpus of Contemporary American Englishhttps://corpus.byu.edu/coca/,
there were 168 reported uses of problem as well
and 64 of problem, as well,
Most of the problem, as well includes another as such as in, problem, as well as, with only a few problem, as well...

Again, this is not definitive according to grammar rules, but it illustrates how American writers included in the database use or don't use the comma.

Definitely not required in that sentence but optional if you need to stress the pause.

In this sentence, I think the use of a comma is optional.