Beware the 'not ... but' comma

It’s an insult to logic and grammar

While we’re on the subject of commas, let’s discuss one that was a particular bugbear of the late Bill Whitworth, editor of The Atlantic: the not … but comma. As in:

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

What is happening now is not the end of the world, but comes pretty close.

On the surface we can see many problems, but not the crucial ones.

This has not set out to be an article about Armageddon, but one that uses such a scenario for illustrative purposes.

No, no, no!

My recent “Hi, comma” post mentioned “many instances where punctuation is meant to illuminate grammar rather than to mimic speech” and observed that the hi, comma is one of them. Not … but sentences are another — except that commas turn up not in too few of them but in way too many. (See what I did there?)

If “What is happening now is not the end of the world, but comes pretty close” looked fine to you (or would have if the heading on this post hadn’t put you on your guard), don’t blame yourself: That’s how many people would write it and how sentences of that kind often appear in print. But, which grammar calls a coordinating conjunction, generally signals a change of direction, and it sometimes signals that a new clause (a subject and a predicate plus their baggage) is about to begin.

But sometimes it signals something else. In my example sentences, but is leading in to the true predicate, conceptually, after what came before was dismissed as what the predicate is not. (A linguist wouldn’t put it that way, but I’m not a linguist.) Separating a subject from its predicate with one comma (two are all right if they enclose something not necessary to the overall meaning) is a solecism — and please hear that word in your mind’s ear with as much hissing in it as you can muster.

That is, what the examples are really trying to say is:

What is happening now comes pretty close [to being the aforementioned end of the world].

On the surface we cannot see the crucial problems.

This has set out to be an article that uses Armageddon for illustrative purposes.

So lose those commas!

Put and keep them in sentences, of course, where the but does lead in to a new clause:

What is happening now is not the end of the world, but it comes pretty close.

On the surface we can see many problems, but we can’t see the crucial ones.

This has not set out to be an article about Armageddon, but it seeks to be one that uses such a scenario for illustrative purposes.

And if it makes you happy to see commas in such places, give orphaned true predicates subjects of their own, as I’ve done above.

Email me with your language questions, peeves, problems, etc., at barbaraswordshop@gmail.com, and I’ll respond as soon as I can. Correspondence may be edited. If you subscribe to The Boston Globe, I hope you’ll look for my column, “May I Have a Word,” in the Ideas section every other Sunday.