There are times when it is perfectly correct to place commas around further information. This is not one of them:
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| Link: The Guardian, ‘First crop of £9,000 tuition fee-paying UK graduates “more focused on pay”’ |
The adjectival clause (or adjective clause) that provides details about timing and fees in the subheading is intended to qualify the subject noun ‘graduates’, but notably this information relates only to students who began their courses in 2012, and not to any others. The information is thus limited, making this an essential adjectival clause, which should not be separated by commas. As it stands, the comma separation incorrectly extends the focus from a specific group of graduates — the 2012 student intake — to all graduates, which is nonsensical since earlier students were not paying fees at the stated rate. (It might also be noted that, as many have yet to go through the formal graduation process, they are probably still graduands, rather than graduates, a distinction the education-minded Guardian should know.)
An essential (or a defining or restrictive) adjectival clause contains crucial information about the subject, without which the whole point is lost. Conversely, an adjectival clause that offers further details that are not necessary to understanding the central point is called non-essential (or non-
A detailed explanation of these clauses and their uses can be found on the Cambridge Dictionaries Online website. More succinct explanations and examples are offered by The Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (note that in US-English the hyphenated descriptors, ‘non-essential’ and so on, become compounds: ‘nonessential’), and also the German website englisch-hilfen.de, which offers some useful observations on correct and colloquial usage.
essential adjectival clause punctuated as non-essential
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