There are many rules in Russian punctuation that are not easy to understand. After all, punctuation marks not only define the boundaries of phrases and sentences, but also help to convey the feelings and emotions of people reproducing them. Whether it is worth highlighting “mostly” with commas or not, we will talk in this article.
Meaning of the word
To understand whether commas are needed to highlight the word “mostly”, you need to determine its meaning and grammatical characteristics.
"Mostly", that is, in predominance over others. For example, "He chooses mostly teddy bears", which means that when choosing from a variety of toys, he chooses bears, and not anything else.
From the point of view of morphology, it can be noted that the word "mainly" is an adverb formed from the adjective "predominant" in a suffixal way.
This adverb is similar to words such as: certainly, really, which, in addition to one of the members of the sentence, can be introductory words.
His leadershipin our team for sure. Leadership (what?) certainly. In this sentence, the analyzed word is part of a compound nominal predicate, expressed by a short neuter adjective.
"Certainly, he is the leader of our team." In this sentence, the analyzed word does not answer the question, therefore, is not one of the members of the sentence, is used to indicate confidence, is easily omitted without changing the meaning. Maybe "predominantly" highlight with commas?
Introductory words
Introductory words are expressions used to give additional meaning to a phrase. They are not members of the proposal, they are separated in the letter, standing out on both sides with commas. They can be expressed by words of various parts of speech, phrases, both stable and changing.
Introductory words are used in several cases:
- When shaping the train of thought (first, on the one hand, therefore).
- When expressing emotions, confidence, uncertainty (fortunately, unfortunately, of course, without a doubt).
- When pointing to the source of speaking (by words, by message, in other words).
- In case of attracting attention (imagine, you see, you know).
- When referring to a measure (at least the largest, no exaggeration).
The word we are analyzing does not have any of the abovevalues, therefore, it is not necessary to highlight “mainly” with commas in the letter. It cannot be an introductory word.
Exception words
Do not separate "mostly" with commas correctly, as well as in the case of other exception words, such as: "decisively", "approximately", "exclusively".
- She wanted mostly warm relationships.
- His actions were strongly rejected.
- It takes approximately five apples to make a pie.
- He's only doing this for her safety.
Clarifying circumstances
“Mostly” is an adverb, so in a sentence, as a rule, it acts as a circumstance. In some cases, circumstances tend to stand apart.
Can it be distinguished "mostly" by commas, following this punctogram?
Circumstances are separated in two cases:
-
Determining the additional value of time: "Today, at nine o'clock in the evening, my favorite movie will be shown on TV." When will the movie be shown? Today. And when exactly? At nine o'clock in the evening.
- Determining the additional meaning of the place: "Tomorrow I'm going to the village, to my parents." Where am I going? To the village. But where exactly? To parents.
Thus, isolated circumstances have a clarifying meaning of place and time. Each subsequent of them will answer the question "when exactly", "where exactly".
The word we are interested in is not a circumstance of time or place, therefore, it cannot stand apart.
