{"id":177,"date":"2014-04-09T19:54:02","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T01:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writeherewritenowwriteon.wordpress.com\/?p=177"},"modified":"2016-02-04T13:27:05","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T19:27:05","slug":"comma-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/comma-drama\/","title":{"rendered":"Comma drama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Carlie Sanderude<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the only one to know how easy it is to get tripped up over commas when writing. Sometimes I get \u201ccomma happy\u201d and throw in commas after nearly every word. Other times I get \u201ccomma lazy\u201d and don\u2019t include enough commas at all. Commas really are not as complicated as we make them out to be if we follow a few simple guidelines. With a little help from my brother (who used to be a writing tutor before he graduated), let me offer the top five most common situations where you would need to use a comma in a sentence:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Between items in a series. <\/strong>Note: the final comma is the somewhat famous Oxford comma that may be considered optional. Use it for clarity in most writing; do not use it in news writing and other mass communication courses.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><em>Ex: Will you please give me a book, a pen, and a piece of paper?<\/em><\/p>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><strong>Between coordinate adjectives. <\/strong>Coordinate adjectives are those that could be connected with \u201cand,\u201d but instead you choose to use a comma.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><em>Ex: The loud, angry man went storming out of the store.<\/em><\/p>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><strong>Before a coordinating conjunction joining independent clauses. <\/strong>The coordinating conjunctions spell FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><em>Ex: I guess I didn\u2019t need to buy the shoes, but I wanted to anyway. <\/em><\/p>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n<li><strong>After an introductory phrase or clause. <\/strong>An introductory phrase or clause is a group of words that sets up a sentence, but is not the main subject of a sentence. It just provides added information.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><em>Ex: When I went to France, I ate bread and cheese everyday.<\/em><\/p>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n<li><strong>After introducing a quote. <\/strong>Place a comma after words such as \u201csaid\u201d or \u201cstated.\u201d The quote must be a direct quote. If you use the word \u201cthat,\u201d then the quote just becomes part of the sentence structure and no comma is needed.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><em>Ex: Descartes said, \u201cI think, therefore I am.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Follow these rules when using commas, and life will become so much easier. If you want to know more situations where commas should be used, visit the tutors in the writing caf\u00e9 in the library and ask for a comma handout! Commas can be daunting, but once you get the hang of it, they\u2019re not difficult at all. But remember: just because you make a pause in a sentence doesn\u2019t mean that you need to add a comma! That\u2019s the big myth in this comma drama.<\/p>\n<p><i>Carlie Sanderude is a senior at Principia College studying business administration and philosophy. She plays on the college\u2019s soccer and tennis teams and has been a writing tutor for two years. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Carlie Sanderude I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the only one to know how easy it is to get tripped up over commas [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,109],"tags":[64,80,92,56],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punctuation","category-writeherewritenowwriteon","tag-clarity-2","tag-comma","tag-editing","tag-style"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5DI6r-2R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}