Help With Commas

How to Use Commas

Instructions

1) Commas can be tricky, but one quick rule of thumb for using them is to read the sentence out loud. Take note of the natural pauses you make while reading your paper. These are the exact places to insert a comma. For example, you would read the following sentence like this:

"We went to the store (pause) bought milk and cheese (pause) then went back home." So, when writing the sentence it would look like this: "We went to the store, bought milk and cheese, then went back home."




2) Another thing to think about when wondering where to put the comma is substituting the comma (or pause) with the word AND. We could have written the above sentence like this: "We went to the store and bought milk and cheese and then went back home." It would have been grammatically correct, but it is awkward -- replace two of the 'ANDs" with commas.



3) It is considered grammatically correct to put the comma in before the word ‘and.’ For example: "We went to the store and bought milk, eggs, and cheese.”

4) Setting off phrases within a sentence with commas is easy by asking the following question: Can you take the entire phrase out without changing the grammatical structure of the sentence?
If you can, then it is all right to add commas. 

For example: "We went to the store, bought milk and eggs, then went home. Now, try taking out the phrase within the commas: 
"We went to the store, then went home." (note the natural pause between the words store and then). And look, the sentence is still correct without the phrase! It's pretty cool!

5) A comma splice occurs when a comma is placed incorrectly in between a noun and a verb. Example: "We, went to the store." 'We,' the noun, is separated from 'went,' the verb, causing a comma splice -- this is incorrect. Make sure there are no commas between nouns and their verbs.

Hope this helped. Good luck on your papers and test tomorrow!

Warm regards,

Mr. T