Handbook: Writing Problems and How to Correct Them

EXERCISE 12.1, Correcting Errors in Comma Use

EXERCISE 12.1

Correcting Errors in Comma Use

Correct any errors in the use of commas in the following sentences. Some sentences may be correct as written.

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1. Seneca Village a crowded shantytown on the Upper West Side was the home of many poorer black New Yorkers.

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2. The city of New York, bought the land where the Seneca villagers lived.

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3. The land became part of Central Park and everyone, who lived there, had to leave in the 1850s.

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4. Household items from Seneca Village still turn up in Central Park today and a museum exhibit was recently devoted to life in the long-gone settlement.

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5. In present-day Brooklyn, there was once a middle-class black settlement, called Weeksville.

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6. James Weeks, an early resident owned much of the land.

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7. Another, early, landholder, Sylvanus Smith, was a trustee of the African Free Schools of Brooklyn.

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8. His daughter, Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, was born in Weeksville, and was the valedictorian of New York Medical College in 1870.

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9. McKinney-Steward became the first, female, African American physician in New York, and the third in the United States.

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10. Weeksville was a success story, for some of the houses survived into the twentieth century and have been preserved as historical monuments.