28 | Commas
28|Commas
Like a split-second pause in conversation, a well-placed comma helps your readers to catch your train of thought. It keeps them from stumbling over a solid block of words or drawing an inaccurate conclusion.
Without the commas, the sentence reads as if Lyman is a painter who works with both a large and a small brush. The commas clarify that Lyman wields a paintbrush, a sword, and a bowling ball.
28aUse a comma with a coordinating conjunction to join two main clauses.
A main clause is a group of words that has both a subject and a verb and can stand alone as a complete sentence (see 4a).
When you join main clauses with a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet), add a comma after the first clause, right before the conjunction.
If your clauses are short and parallel in form, you may omit the comma. Or you may keep the comma to throw emphasis on your second clause.
| Spring passed and summer came. | Spring passed, and summer came. |
| They urged but I refused. | They urged, but I refused. |
A phrase consists of two or more related words that work together but may lack a subject, a verb, or both (see 4b).
CAUTION: Don’t use a comma with a coordinating conjunction that links two verbs or phrases.
28bUse a comma after an introductory clause, phrase, or word.
A clause is a group of related words that includes both a subject and a verb (see 4a).
Weeping, Lydia stumbled down the stairs.
Before that, Arthur saw her reading an old love letter.
If he knew who the writer was, he didn’t tell.
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Placed after any such opening word, phrase, or subordinate clause, a comma tells your reader, “Enough preliminaries: now the main clause starts.”
EXCEPTION: You need not use a comma after a single introductory word or a short phrase or clause if there is no danger of misreading.
Sooner or later Lydia will tell us the whole story.
EXERCISE 28-1 Using Commas
Add any necessary commas to the following sentences, and remove any commas that do not belong. Some sentences may be correct. Example:
He was so upset about his lack of connection to the outside world that he might as well have not even come on the trip.
When we returned to the hotel he couldn’t wait to check for any messages.
James logged on to the hotel wifi immediately but he was surprised to find that he hadn’t gotten any e-mails all morning.
His office hadn’t called him nor had his friends left him any messages.
He pretended to be relieved that nothing urgent had come up at work but I think he was secretly annoyed that everyone was doing fine without him.
Some people say that we are overly wired in this age of modern gadgets but others just can’t get enough technology.
How often do we stop to look around and talk with other people on the train or in a coffee shop?
One family instituted a “tech-free Tuesday” in their home so nobody had access to wifi, telephones, or television.
They played games together after dinner, and read books before going to sleep.
The teenage kids hated it at first but they ended up enjoying their night off from digital connections.
28cUse a comma between items in a series.
When you list three or more items, whether they are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, or entire phrases or clauses, separate them with commas.
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Notice that no comma follows the coordinating conjunction.
NOTE: Some writers omit the comma before the final item in the series. This custom may throw off the rhythm of a sentence and, in some cases, obscure the writer’s meaning. Using the comma in such a case is never wrong and is preferred in academic style; omitting it can create confusion.
I was met at the station by my cousins, brother and sister.
Are these people a brother-and-sister pair who are the writer’s cousins? Or are they a group consisting of the writer’s cousins, her brother, and her sister? If they are more than two people, a comma would clear up the confusion.
I was met at the station by my cousins, brother, and sister.
28dUse a comma between coordinate adjectives but not between cumulative adjectives.
Adjectives that function independently of each other, though they modify the same noun, are called coordinate adjectives. Set them off with commas.
Ruth was a clear, vibrant, persuasive speaker.
Life is nasty, brutish, and short.
CAUTION: Don’t use a comma after the final adjective before a noun.
To check whether adjectives are coordinate, ask two questions. Can you rearrange the adjectives without distorting the meaning? (Ruth was a persuasive, vibrant, clear speaker.) Can you insert and between them? (Life is nasty and brutish and short.) If the answer to both is yes, the adjectives are coordinate. Removing any one of them would not greatly affect the others. Use commas between them to show that they are separate and equal.
Coordinating conjunctions join elements of equal or near-equal importance (see 1g and 19a–19c).
NOTE: If you link coordinate adjectives with and or another coordinating conjunction, omit the commas except in a series (see 28c).
Cumulative adjectives work together to create a single unified picture of the noun they modify. No commas separate them.
Ruth has two small white poodles.
Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
For more on cumulative adjectives, see 13c.
If you remove, rearrange, or insert and between cumulative adjectives, the effect is distorted (two white small poodles; the big and bad wolf).
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EXERCISE 28-2 Using Commas
In these sentences, add any necessary commas, remove any unneeded ones, and change any incorrect punctuation. Some sentences may be correct. Example:
Mrs. Carver looks like a sweet, little, old lady, but she plays a wicked electric guitar.
Her bass player, her drummer and her keyboard player all live in the same retirement community.
They practice individually in the afternoon, rehearse together at night and play at the community’s Saturday night dances.
The Rest Home Rebels have to rehearse quietly, and cautiously, to keep from disturbing the other residents.
Mrs. Carver has organized the group, scheduled their rehearsals, and acquired backup instruments.
When she breaks a string, she doesn’t want her elderly crew to have to grab the guitar change the string and hand it back to her, before the song ends.
The Rest Home Rebels’ favorite bands are U2, Arcade Fire and Lester Lanin and his orchestra.
They watch a lot of MTV because it is fast-paced colorful exciting and informative and it has more variety than soap operas.
Just once, Mrs. Carver wants to play in a really, huge, sold-out, arena.
She hopes to borrow the community’s big, white, van to take herself her band and their equipment to a major, professional, recording studio.
28eUse commas to set off a nonrestrictive phrase or clause.
A modifier is a word, phrase, or clause that provides more information about other parts of a sentence (see 15).
A nonrestrictive modifier adds a fact that, while perhaps interesting and valuable, isn’t essential. You could leave it out of the sentence and still make sense. Set off the modifier with commas before and after.
Potts Alley, which runs north from Chestnut Street, is too narrow for cars.
At the end of the alley, where the fair was held last May, a getaway car waited.
A restrictive modifier is essential. Omit it and you significantly change the meaning of the modified word and the sentence. Such a modifier is called restrictive because it limits what it modifies: it specifies this place, person, or action and no other. Because a restrictive modifier is part of the identity of whatever it modifies, no commas set it off from the rest of the sentence.
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They picked the alley that runs north from Chestnut Street because it is close to the highway.
Anyone who robs my house will be disappointed.
Leaving out the modifier in that last sentence changes the meaning from potential robbers to humankind.
NOTE: Use that to introduce (or to recognize) a restrictive phrase or clause. Use which to introduce (or to recognize) a nonrestrictive phrase or clause.
The food that I love best is chocolate.
Chocolate, which I love, is not on my diet.
28fUse commas to set off nonrestrictive appositives.
An appositive is a word or group of words that adds information by identifying a subject or an object in a different way (see 4b).
Like the modifiers discussed in 28e, an appositive can be either restrictive or nonrestrictive. If it is nonrestrictive—if the sentence still makes sense when it is omitted or changed—then set it off with commas before and after.
My third ex-husband, Hugo, will be glad to meet you.
We are bringing dessert, a blueberry pie, to follow dinner.
If the appositive is restrictive—if you can’t take it out or change it without changing your meaning—then include it without commas.
Of all the men I’ve been married to, my ex-husband Hugo is the best cook.
EXERCISE 28-3 Using Commas
Add any necessary commas to the following sentences, and remove any commas that do not belong. Draw your own conclusions about what the writer meant to say, as needed. Some sentences may be correct. Example:
We are bringing a dish vegetable lasagna, to the potluck supper.
I like to go to Central Bank, on this side of town, because this branch tends to have short lines.
The colony, that the English established at Roanoke disappeared mysteriously.
If the base commanders had checked their gun room where powder is stored, they would have found that several hundred pounds of gunpowder were missing.
Brazil’s tropical rain forests which help produce the air we breathe all over the world, are being cut down at an alarming rate.
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The aye-aye which is a member of the lemur family is threatened with extinction.
The party, a dismal occasion ended earlier than we had expected.
The general warned that the concessions, that the military was prepared to make, would be withdrawn if not matched by the rebels.
Although both of Don’s children are blond, his daughter Sharon has darker hair than his son Jake.
Herbal tea which has no caffeine makes a better after-dinner drink than coffee.
28gUse commas to set off conjunctive adverbs.
For a list of common conjunctive adverbs, see 19c.
When you drop a conjunctive adverb into the middle of a clause, set it off with commas before and after.
Using lead paint in homes has been illegal, however, since 1973.
Builders, indeed, gave it up some twenty years earlier.
28hUse commas to set off parenthetical expressions.
Use a pair of commas around any parenthetical expression or any aside from you to your readers.
Home inspectors, for this reason, sometimes test for lead paint.
Cosmic Construction never used lead paint, or so their spokesperson says, even when it was legal.
28iUse commas to set off a phrase or clause expressing contrast.
It was Rudolph, not Dasher, who had a red nose.
EXCEPTION: Short contrasting phrases beginning with but need no commas.
28jUse commas to set off an absolute phrase.
An absolute phrase is an expression, usually a noun followed by a participle, that modifies an entire clause or sentence and can appear anywhere in the sentence (see 4b).
The link between an absolute phrase and the rest of the sentence is a comma, or two commas if the phrase falls in midsentence.
Our worst fears drawing us together, we huddled over the letter.
Luke, his knife being the sharpest, slit the envelope.
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EXERCISE 28-4 Using Commas
Add any necessary commas to the following sentences, and change any punctuation that is incorrect. Example:
The university insisted however that the students were not accepted merely because of their parents’ generous contributions.
This dispute in any case is an old one.
It was the young man’s striking good looks not his acting ability that first attracted the Hollywood agents.
Gretchen learned moreover not always to accept as true what she had read in celebrity magazines.
The hikers most of them wearing ponchos or rain jackets headed out into the steady drizzle.
The lawsuit demanded furthermore that construction already under way be halted immediately.
It is the Supreme Court not Congress or the president that ultimately determines the legality of a law.
The judge complained that the case was being tried not by the court but by the media.
The actor kneeling recited the lines with great emotion.
Both sides’ patience running thin workers and management carried the strike into its sixth week.
28kUse commas to set off a direct quotation from your own words.
For advice on using punctuation marks with quotations, see 33g–33i; for advice on using quotation marks, see 33a–33d.
When you briefly quote someone, distinguish the source’s words from yours with commas (and, of course, quotation marks). When you insert an explanation into a quotation (such as he said), set that off with commas. The comma always comes before the quotation marks.
Shakespeare wrote, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
“The best thing that can come with success,” commented the actress Liv Ullmann, “is the knowledge that it is nothing to long for.”
EXCEPTION: Do not use a comma with a very short quotation or one introduced by that.
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A linking verb is a verb that shows a state of being by linking the sentence subject with a word that renames or describes the subject (see 1c and 3b).
Don’t tell me “yes” if you mean “maybe.”
Jules said that “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” is his motto.
Don’t use a comma with any quotation run in to your own sentence and read as part of it. Often such quotations are introduced by linking verbs.
Her favorite statement at age three was “I can do it myself.”
Shakespeare originated the expression “my salad days, when I was green in judgment.”
28lUse commas around yes and no, mild interjections, tag questions, and the name or title of someone directly addressed.
An interjection is a word or expression that inserts an outburst of feeling (see 1h).
| YES AND NO | Yes, I’d like a Rolls-Royce, but, no, I didn’t order one. |
| INTERJECTION | Well, don’t blame it on me. |
| TAG QUESTION | It would be fun to ride in a Silver Cloud, wouldn’t it? |
| DIRECT ADDRESS | Drive us home, James. |
28mUse commas to set off dates, states, countries, and addresses.
On June 6, 1995, Ned Shaw was born.
East Rutherford, New Jersey, seemed like Paris, France, to him.
His family moved to 11 Maple Street, Middletown, Ohio.
Do not add a comma between state and zip code: Bedford, MA 01730.
EXERCISE 28-5 Using Commas
Add any necessary commas to the following sentences, remove any commas that do not belong, and change any punctuation that is incorrect. Some sentences may be correct. Example:
César Chávez was born on March 31 1927, on a farm in Yuma, Arizona.
Chávez, who spent years as a migrant farmworker, told other farm laborers “If you’re outraged at conditions, then you can’t possibly be free or happy until you devote all your time to changing them.”
Chávez founded the United Farm Workers union and did indeed, devote all his time to changing conditions for farmworkers.
Robert F. Kennedy called Chávez, “one of the heroic figures of our time.”
Chávez, who died on April 23, 1993, became the second Mexican American to receive the highest civilian honor in the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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Yes I was born on April 14 1988 in Bombay India.
Move downstage Gary, for Pete’s sake or you’ll run into Mrs. Clackett.
Vicki my precious, when you say, “great” or “terrific,” look as though you mean it.
Perhaps you have forgotten darling that sometimes you make mistakes, too.
Well Dotty, it only makes sense that when you say, “Sardines!,” you should go off to get the sardines.