<p>I wanted to know what does "whereby" have in punctuation when it joins two independent clauses. Is it a conjunctive adverb so it takes a semicolon before and a comma after? or only a comma or even no comma? help please! I have just seen many sentences all with different punctuation :S Thanks in advance</p>
<p>It’s a subordinating conjunction and can be punctuated with or without a comma, depending on whether the clause is restrictive or not:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>This is a plan whereby students can succeed.</p></li>
<li><p>Tomorrow the college unveils the new freshman plan, whereby all freshman can succeed.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>A semicolon in either of those sentences would be wrong, wrong, wrong.</p>
<p>Tip: if you’re writing an admissions essay, don’t use “whereby.” It will sound archaic and pretentious. Just my opinion, of course.</p>
<p>^^ I hope OP is asking for general knowledge or to help with writing questions on standardized test. Otherwise, I agree with Hunt, and I’ll even add to it. As a semi-professional writer who does a lot of writing in his day job (writing professor), I’d advise you to simply strike “whereby” from all your writing.</p>
<p>Thankk you 
yeah i never use it , but i always get confused when i see it in the writing questions</p>
<p>just to make sure , wherin is also a subordinate conjunction which follows the same rule?</p>
<p>Yup. And it also has an archaic feeling. Add wherefore to the list, too.</p>