have four main uses: 1. Using commas to make numbers, place-names, and dates clear Virginias population was 1,000,000 in If you visit Emily Dickinsons house in Amherst, Massachusetts, you wont see anything that truly belonged to Emily Dickinson. Abraham Lincoln was shot the night of April 14, 1865, and died the following morning.

have four main uses: 2. Using commas to help indicate when you are quoting (exactly) the words of someone else Hello, she said, can I help you with that? But : She asked if she could help me.

have four main uses: 3. Using commas to separate words that are parts of list in sentences (homogeneous parts of the sentence) At lunch I ate potato chips, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a banana, two cupcakes, and some barbecued eel. He was livid, he was angry, and he was mad.

have four main uses: 4. Using commas to build sentences that contain multiple parts Her father, who was born in Saudi Arabia, always longed for the hottest days in August. She looked up at me, and she burst into tears.

numbers - to separate the digits in numbers higher than 999 1,ooo (but 999) 2, 304,506 But: there are no commas in numbers that represent years. It is also conventional not to use commas in street addresses West Second Street

place-names When you mention a location and the larger place of which it is a part - separate the two place-names with commas: Neighborhood, city: Neighborhood, city: Algiers, New Orleans City, state: City, state: Houghton, Michigan State, country: State, country: Oregon, United States Province, country: Province, country: Tangier, Morocco

dates 1. When you include a full date in this order - month, day, year - put a comma after the day: February 17, If you are writing only the month and year, you do not need a comma between them: February This format is for citing webpages: 17 Feb. 1951

When you refer to something that someone else said but dont use the persons exact words, you are using indirect quotation. In indirect quotation, you do not use quotation marks or commas: INDIRECT QUOTATION: Mr.Quiring has told me that essays and stories generally come, organically, to a preordained ending that is quite out of a writers control.

1. If you are listing only two nouns, verbs, adjectives, phrases, or clauses in a sentence, here is the pattern to follow: and She ran and dove into the water. 2. If you are combining three or more nouns, verbs, adjectives, phrases, or clauses, here is the pattern to follow:,, and She grinned, ran, and dove into the water.

As with nouns and verbs, when you list three or more phrases or clauses, use comma between each. Furious, Buffmeier walked through the front door, exited to the back, crossed the parking lot, and went into his shack. But! Use semicolons - and not commas - between a series of phrases that themselves contain commas: The four common principles that ran through much of this thought through the end of the Cold War were a concern with democracy, human rights, and, more generally, the internal politics of states; a belief that...

But! Adjectives that cannot be rearranged are called non-coordinate adjectives, and they do not have commas between them: Three huge gray whales swam by. non-coordinate adjectives

When you write the sentence, which complicate the basic subject-verb-object structure, commas set off the sentences parts and help readers see and better understand how the sentences parts relate to each other: In 1963, in response to a racist bombing of a church in Alabama, ID magazine published an article about race in industrial design, but they discussed only one female African American designer, Madeleine Ward. sentences that contain multiple parts

independent, coordinating independent clause conjunction clause. and yet but for or so nor When you combine two sentences, the convention of written English is to put a comma and then a coordinating conjunction between the two: using commas to add one sentence onto the end of another

We passed them buckets of water, and they threw the water onto the fire. He swung his arms wildly, but the mosquitoes still swarmed around him. The molecules attach to this material, for they have proper affinity with it. For example,

non-essential information In my dreams,,on occasion, I play the drums., who have no, to the delight of my musical sense, neighbor downstairs Parenthetical clauses (phrases): If you can remove a phrase from a sentence without changing the basic meaning of the sentence, separate the phrase from the rest of the sentence with commas.

non-essential information On Wednesday we conduct the experiment. Parenthetical clauses (phrases): If you use only one or two introductory words, you can omit the commas.

non-essential information Once Im awake, though, I tend to lie there wondering if Ive made a terrible mistake. When you use explanatory words and phrases such as though and for example, they should be set off by commas: But! Do not put a comma after though if the word introduces a phrase: Though she had already been executed, Joan of Arc was acquitted on July 7, 1456.

when not to use commas I am writing about the woman, who was nominated for president by the Republican Party in Before information essential to a sentence: Between two clauses that are not independent: Some people look at war, and see nothing but violence and chaos. Before than: Some scientists argue that there is no clearer indication of global warming, than Greenlands melting glaciers.

when not to use commas Everything good, is bad for you. Between a sentences verb and its subject or object: Before or after parentheses ( ): A political career, (or a legal one) is the surest ticket to a historical legacy. After a subordinating conjunction: Although, scientists no longer consider Pluto to be a planet, many still seek that little celestial body in their telescopes. Before the first item in a list, or after the last item: Many accidents of geography, history, and biology, created our lopsided.

Lecture 3: bagumyan.at.ua