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Does this sentence need a comma before “which”?

The sentence of interest:

She wasn’t able to send the pictures to you earlier due to technical difficulties with her phone which took an unusually long time to resolve.

When is it appropriate for a comma to precede the word “which,” and is the sentence above correct?

Thanks in advance.

Manasi Amberker
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    Yes, this needs a comma. It’s a non-restrictive relative clause. – Xanne Apr 23 '20 at 02:47
  • If it's nonrestrictive, and if it's US English, then a comma is needed. If it's restrictive, and it's US English, then which should be replaced with that. (In UK English, both which and that are commonly used with restrictive clauses.) So, you need to first determine if it's restrictive or nonrestrictive. – Jason Bassford Apr 23 '20 at 05:35
  • Note: It's quite possible that it's a restrictive clause. She could have two phones, one with problems that took an unusually long time to resolve, and another that had no problems at all. It's restrictive if you have to specify the phone in question. – Jason Bassford Apr 23 '20 at 05:37
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    Does this answer your question? Is it appropriate to put a comma before "which"? – Jason Bassford Apr 23 '20 at 05:40
  • @JasonBassford The referent is, I think, technical difficulties, not her phone. – Xanne Apr 23 '20 at 08:04
  • @Xanne That's likely. (But even that wouldn't mean the clause was necessarily nonrestrictive. There could be technical difficulties with her washing machine that were also taking a long time to resolve, again making the clause restrictive.) However, it's also possible it's referring to the phone. The first time I read the sentence, I parsed it as the phone itself taking a long time to resolve something, such as a website. It was only on the second reading that I picked up the other meaning. It's the intervening words that cause the possible ambiguity—even if common sense says otherwise. – Jason Bassford Apr 23 '20 at 10:39

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