Does this need a comma?

Question

This would be very beneficial to the community both for wildlife and for people.

Answer 1

Hi!

For a sentence such as this one, I like the use of the dash instead of the comma.  You almost have to read the sentence aloud to get the difference, because it is subtle.  But it is an effective way to show emphasis--which is what you are doing in the sample sentence.  (See, that is an example of how a dash might be used in the place of a comma.  In cursive writing, the dash is a little longer than a hyphen. If you create the dash on the computer (in Word), you will type two hyphens side by side, and then the computer will automatically turn those into one line.  

So, your sample sentence would be punctuated like this:  This would be very beneficial to the community--both for wildlife and for people.

Here it is with the comma:

This would be very beneficial to the community, both for wildlife and for people.  

The dash highlights the final clause better visually.  Main rule of thumb about dashes is to use them sparingly--something I have to remind myself about all the time!

Hope this helps!