Okay, for the past year I devoted at least three hours a week to grammar. It has helped, sort of, but I'm just not cut out for grammar. You can give me a million different sites to try and books to read, but I'll be just as horrid at it tomorrow as I was today. So what I'm wondering is, does anyone have any special tricks they use to know when to use commas and when not to? (any help would be appreciated!)
Yes, It's Another Comma Problem, But Just Let Me Explain
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A comma has seven specific purposes:
- To separate items in a list
ex. I like apples, oranges, and bananas.
- To connect two independent clauses
ex. She walked into the road, and a car clipped her.
- To attach a dependent clause to the beginning of an independent clause
ex. Following World War II, the United States became a leading world power.
- To separate two adjectives
ex. Blood dripped from her sharp, yellow teeth.
- To show a change of direction in a sentence
ex. The queen viewed herself as omnipotent, not a pushover.
- To separate states from countries, names from titles, and dates when written in full
ex. I visited New York City, New York.
ex. Steve Nash, starting point guard for the Phoenix Suns, won MVP in back-to-back seasons.
ex. The day is September 19, 2009.
- To separate a quote from its introduction or explanation
ex. She peered over his shoulder and asked, "What are you writing?"
ex. "With a little bit of practice, commas aren't too tough," he said.
There are exceptions to these rules, but this will help you get started. Good luck!
- To separate items in a list
ex. I like apples, oranges, and bananas.
- To connect two independent clauses
ex. She walked into the road, and a car clipped her.
- To attach a dependent clause to the beginning of an independent clause
ex. Following World War II, the United States became a leading world power.
- To separate two adjectives
ex. Blood dripped from her sharp, yellow teeth.
- To show a change of direction in a sentence
ex. The queen viewed herself as omnipotent, not a pushover.
- To separate states from countries, names from titles, and dates when written in full
ex. I visited New York City, New York.
ex. Steve Nash, starting point guard for the Phoenix Suns, won MVP in back-to-back seasons.
ex. The day is September 19, 2009.
- To separate a quote from its introduction or explanation
ex. She peered over his shoulder and asked, "What are you writing?"
ex. "With a little bit of practice, commas aren't too tough," he said.
There are exceptions to these rules, but this will help you get started. Good luck!
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Read books (by good authors, not Dan Brown) and pay attention to the ways in which they use punctuation.
Am I wrong in thinking there is one other rule? It could roughly fit into "separating names from titles", but it seems a bit ambiguous. I was always taught that any naming in a sentence is separated by commas, am I missing which rule that fits into?
Ex - "I didn't want to go, Dad."
or
"He didn't shoot the rabbit, Steve, he wasn't even over there."
Linus,
if you want detailed rules, there are 21 of them in the grammarbook.com .
I believe, you can get some questiones answered or ask a question in this comma thread.
if you want detailed rules, there are 21 of them in the grammarbook.com .
I believe, you can get some questiones answered or ask a question in this comma thread.
Something that helps me, at least in certain cases, is "use commas when the sentence doesn't make sense without them." (Clearly there are other times when you should use commas, too, but it's helpful) By that I mean, in Linus's sentence "He didn't shoot the rabbit, Steve, he wasn't even over there.", if you take out the comma before Steve, it becomes
"He didn't shoot the rabbit Steve, he wasn't even over there."
And in that case, I think the rabbit's name is Steve, not that he's talking to Steve. The hard and fast rules for commas are...not so hard and fast. They can be bent. But making sure that your writing is easy to read and makes sense should be top on your list of priorities.
"He didn't shoot the rabbit Steve, he wasn't even over there."
And in that case, I think the rabbit's name is Steve, not that he's talking to Steve. The hard and fast rules for commas are...not so hard and fast. They can be bent. But making sure that your writing is easy to read and makes sense should be top on your list of priorities.
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Something that helps me, at least in certain cases, is "use commas when the sentence doesn't make sense without them." (Clearly there are other times when you should use commas, too, but it's helpful) By that I mean, in Linus's sentence "He didn't shoot the rabbit, Steve, he wasn't even over there.", if you take out the comma before Steve, it becomes
"He didn't shoot the rabbit Steve, he wasn't even over there."
And in that case, I think the rabbit's name is Steve, not that he's talking to Steve. The hard and fast rules for commas are...not so hard and fast. They can be bent. But making sure that your writing is easy to read and makes sense should be top on your list of priorities.
Yes, that rule is my favorite. Alas, there are many times when I read a sentence with an independant clause that is not separated with a comma, and it looks like it could mean several different things.
BTW, your example is a comma splice. they should be two sentences.
"He didn't shoot the rabbit, Steve. He wasn't even over there."
I just want to say thanks to everyone who stopped in and left some advice, I'm really thankful. Hopefully, this will help me improve. **keeping my fingers crossed**
Commas are my nemesis, too. Be sure to take a look at the comma threads referenced in the "Frequently Asked Questions" thread stickied to the top of this forum. Might help.
I was taught (I think by "On Writing" by Stephen King) that in dialogue you can bend comma rules very liberally because most people don't speak in sentences. It would sound disjointed and unnatural if you followed proper sentence structure, people don't make that many hard stops (periods) while speaking and as such commas make it flow much more smoothly.
Is this a generally accepted veering from the path or is it another one of Mr. King's rules that only he can get away with?
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I agree that people don't generally speak with carefully articulated stops, but there are stops in speech, and most of them correspond with punctuation. On the other hand, one does not read speech; one reads written dialogue, if the dialogue is badly punctuated, then it would be difficult to understand. It's a question that may be answered by "eats shoots and leaves", or do pandas eat, shoots, and leaves?
Some people speak the meter of the language and punctuation so strongly that it approaches being poetry.
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Well, I've a degree in linguistics so you think I should know where bloomin' things go. Still get it wrong, though. My only tip would be the one I learnt at primary school:
'If in doubt, love, just use a full stop.'
Which is fine until you come to lists...
'If in doubt, love, just use a full stop.'
Which is fine until you come to lists...
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