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Does this sentence require a comma before including?

He has written on a range of moral issues including poverty, globalization, and euthanasia.

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    This is one of those hateful gerund clauses that is inherently ambiguous, so it always requires a comma and the understanding that it means the items that follow the word including are just a few examples, not an exhaustive list. If what you want is an exhaustive list, then instead of including, you must say either "a range of moral issues: poverty, globalization, and euthanasia" or "He has written on the moral issues of poverty, globalization, and euthanasia" -- "a range of" then becomes a pointless verbosity. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don't use unnecessary words.
    – user21497
    Mar 22, 2013 at 7:22
  • @BillFranke: I agree, especially about the comma and the non-definitivity/-ness, although I consider including a participle here.
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Mar 23, 2013 at 20:58
  • @Cerberus: You may be right that it's a participle rather than a gerund, so I should change the term to /-ing/-word clauses. Then whatever its part of speech is has no bearing on its meaning or stylistic fitness.
    – user21497
    Mar 24, 2013 at 0:52
  • @BillFranke: You could call them that, or participial phrases, or -ing modifiers? I like to distinguish between -ing forms that mean "that/which/who include(s)" and those meaning "the act of including / to include", but I understand there are some who somehow prefer using one word for both -ing forms. [You could replace the -ing forms in my sentence with that mean and to prefer, respectively...see how nicely that works?]
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Mar 24, 2013 at 1:29

3 Answers 3

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It requires a comma because including is the subordinating conjunction for the dependent clause. Notice that if you DON'T put a comma there, you are essentially qualifying the moral issues upon which he has written as only those that include poverty ("moral issues including poverty"), in which case "globalization, and euthanasia" becomes one of two things: either a meaningless fragment, or the last two elements in a linking sequence that was not intended ("1. a range of moral issues including poverty, 2. globalization, and 3. euthanasia").

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  • +1 Agreed, but it is a participle, not a conjunction.
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Mar 23, 2013 at 20:59
  • @Cerberus But just as with many parts of speech it can qualify as more than one part of speech, and although I can't absolutely swear to this, I think it must qualify as the subordinating conjunction for the dependent clause in this case, because we have a dependent clause which is conjoined to the independent clause, and something conjoins it, and "including" is the word which conjoins it, so I don't think we can say that it isn't the subordinating conjunction.
    – John M. Landsberg
    Sep 21, 2013 at 15:43
  • It could also be “a range of moral issues that include 1) poverty, 2) globalisation, and 3) euthanasia”, though I'll readily admit that I can think of no moral issues that include all these things. But it seems odd to me to refer to globalisation as a moral issue, anyway.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Oct 2, 2013 at 9:04
  • Setting aside the point that the debate over whether the use of "including" creates an ambiguity was neither invited by nor relevant to the question posed, I completely disagree that it creates an ambiguity. "Including" has a clear meaning, and the fact that some writers may use it sloppily or some readers may infer the possibility of a complete list should not dissuade any writer from using it properly.
    – user62397
    Jan 15, 2014 at 15:28
  • @Cerberus There is set of -ing words that either already have or are on their way towards turning into prepositions. I don’t think you’ll quibble over words like during, barring, excepting, failing, saving, notwithstanding as one-time verbal forms now accepted as prepositions. Others aren’t necessarily there yet, or have variant analyses where dictionaries hedge their bets with weasel words: even the OED calls excluding, passing, pending “quasi-prepositions”, and other sources list some as “not fully grammaticized”.
    – tchrist ♦
    May 18, 2014 at 2:46
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In that sentence, a comma is required before “including,” which is introducing a partial list (per Garner's Modern American Usage).

@user21497, @Cerberus, @BillFranke, @John M. Landsberg: A participle (the -ing or -ed form of a verb) can be used in various ways: as a gerund, which is a noun (singing is fun); as an adjective (a flying nun; a missed opportunity); or, as is the case above, as a preposition. (Preposition = a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause, as in “the man on the platform” and “she arrived after dinner” -- from the online Oxford dictionary.)

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    Analysing certain -ing words as prepositions is an interesting topic. With some there is no question: “I sleep during the day.” But in others there may still be some leeway or dispute or transition. I have the feeling that including is one such, since when you say “I sleep all the time, including during the day.’ you find that if you analyse including there as a preposition, then its prepositional object must be the entire prepositional phrase during the day — making it suddenly a noun phrase, which I’m more than a little skeptical about. See my comments to Cerberus above.
    – tchrist ♦
    May 18, 2014 at 3:10
  • I would begin with "-ing and -ed forms can be used...", not "a participle can be used...", because participles exclude gerunds and prepositions.
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    May 18, 2014 at 3:55
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I think most of you are wrong. It is not a gerund because it is not acting as a noun, nor is it a participle because it is not used as a describing word. It is also not a subordinating conjunction as this requires a complete sentence on both sides of the conjunction. It is a transition word.

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    If you mean 'it's possibly somewhere in the verb - noun - adjective quagmire that ing-forms tend to inhabit' I'd agree. Quirk examines the noun - verb cline, but the adjectivy influence is usually present too. It could be read as a participle here. But this is not a direct answer to the question OP asks. You might like to look at the “I left smoking”, “I quit smoking”, “I gave up smoking”, “I stopped smoking” are these same? thread.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Jan 23, 2015 at 17:28
  • @EdwinAshworth Ah, but these are now held to be prepositions, which is not even in your spectral gamut. So I think the poster is on to something here.
    – tchrist ♦
    Jan 23, 2015 at 22:54
  • @tchrist Yes; I'm more convinced of the preposition-ness of 'including' and similar than that of those wotsits lacking noun groups. So 'transition' is being used to mean 'migrating from POS4 to POS12'. Different from 'hard to say it's POS4 rather than POS12, but whatever it is, it's been there a long time'.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Jan 23, 2015 at 23:54
  • I can see the answer here "It is a transition word" which carries the implication of "It needs a comma" but adding that explicitly would be good.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Jan 24, 2015 at 8:35

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