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First off, let me clarify that I am by no means a grammar scholar, so please excuse any mistakes I make.

My questions is with regard to the following phrase: "what the purpose will be, I don't know."

Is a coma proper here? If not, what punctuation should go here?

I realize that the sentence should be, "I don't know what the purpose will be", but for stylistic purposes I've chosen to reorder the sentence (making it passive voice, if my highschool grammar lessons are remembered correctly).

Thanks for your help.

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    To be doesn't really do passive like that, it only serves as auxiliary to another verb such as: "The sentence was reordered by you."
    – Jiminy Cricket.
    Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 21:22
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    Welcome! There are a few giant battle fronts here but one of the oldest is that over the use of commas, semicolons coming up second. The reason for this is the many uses of the comma both in written text and text as spoken. Your sentence works fine.
    – Elliot
    Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 21:24
  • Does this answer your question? Do we use a comma here? "This, we will do last." vs "This we will do last." (Comma with fronting).
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 16:23

2 Answers 2

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[What the purpose will be], I don't know.

I'd say that the comma is optional, but preferable. It doesn't change the meaning or the syntax.

The bracketed element is a subordinate interrogative clause (embedded question) functioning as complement of "know".

The basic (non-preposed) version, "I don't know what the purpose will be" means:

"I don't know the answer to the question 'What will the purpose will be?'"

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I like your comma. It gives me the feeling that you first imply a question, “What is the purpose”, and then follow it with the answer “I don’t know”. The implied question and its answer sit nicely together in apposition within your phrase.

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