Non-Restrictive Participle Appositives in Technical English
5 exercises — practise comma placement around non-restrictive participle phrases.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses a non-restrictive participle appositive to add extra, non-essential information about a single named service?
"The billing service, running on three replicas, handles all invoice generation" is correct: because there is only one billing service, the participle phrase is non-essential extra detail and must be set off by commas on both sides. Option B omits both commas, which incorrectly presents the participle phrase as restrictive (as if there were multiple billing services and this one is identified by its replica count). Option C omits the closing comma, leaving the phrase improperly attached to the main clause. Option D omits the opening comma while keeping the closing one, creating an unbalanced and incorrect boundary.
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses a non-restrictive past participle appositive to describe a uniquely identified configuration file?
"The config file, located in /etc/app, was updated during last night's deploy" is correct: since "the config file" already refers to one specific file, the participle phrase adds non-essential detail and needs commas on both sides. Option A has a comma only after the phrase, not before it. Option B has a comma only before the phrase, not after it. Option C omits both commas entirely, incorrectly treating the location as if it were necessary to identify which config file is meant.
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly distinguishes a restrictive participle phrase (no commas) from a non-restrictive one (with commas)?
"Engineers working on the payments team must complete security training; the CTO, speaking at the all-hands, confirmed the deadline" is correct: "working on the payments team" is restrictive (it identifies which engineers, out of many, are meant) and takes no commas, while "speaking at the all-hands" is non-restrictive (there is only one CTO) and requires commas on both sides. Option A wrongly adds commas around the restrictive phrase, implying incorrectly that all engineers must complete training. Option C removes the necessary commas around the non-restrictive CTO phrase and adds an incorrect one after "team". Option D scrambles the comma placement in both halves of the sentence.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses a non-restrictive participle appositive after a proper noun, which by definition is already uniquely identified?
"Kubernetes, originally developed by Google, is now maintained by the CNCF" is correct: proper nouns like "Kubernetes" are inherently unique, so any participle phrase describing them is automatically non-restrictive and must be enclosed in commas. Option A omits both commas, incorrectly implying the phrase is needed to identify which Kubernetes is meant. Option C has an opening comma but no closing one. Option D has a closing comma but no opening one, both producing unbalanced punctuation around the appositive.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly places commas around a non-restrictive participle appositive describing a single, already-identified pull request?
"PR #482, merged early this morning, introduced a subtle race condition" is correct: "PR #482" is a specific, unique identifier, so the participle phrase describing when it was merged is non-essential and needs commas on both sides. Option B has only a closing comma, leaving the phrase improperly attached at the start. Option C has only an opening comma, leaving it improperly attached at the end. Option D omits both commas, which would be correct only if the phrase were needed to distinguish this PR from other PRs sharing the same number, which is not the case here.