Grammar Girl here, today we're going to talk about the phrase just because.

In general, the Peef cards in my Peef Wars game deal with commonly known problems, such

as dangling modifiers and misused apostrophes, but one card isn't about mistakes.

It's the grammar snob card.

This card says just because you're correct doesn't mean you're not annoying.

Did you realize that this card too has some, shall we say, unusual grammar in it?

I'll repeat the sentence on the grammar snob card.

Just because you're correct doesn't mean you're not annoying.

If you try to analyze this sentence by breaking it down into its subject and predicate, you'll

see that it doesn't have a typical subject predicate structure.

The predicate is the verb phrase doesn't mean you're not annoying.

It's when we try to identify the subject that things get weird.

Although not all linguists agree, most take the subject to be just because you're right.

This is unusual, though, because just because you're right is not a noun phrase like a typical

subject.

It's an entire clause.

Of course, some clauses do act like noun phrases, we call them noun clauses.

However, noun clauses begin with the subordinating conjunction that, or with a question word, such

as who, what, where, when, why, or how.

For example, in the sentence, how you do it doesn't matter.

How you do it is a noun clause acting as the subject of the sentence.

Noun clauses typically don't begin with the subordinating conjunction because, or with

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