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Rules for CommaUsage 

Guide to Grammar and Writing 

-- commas

 

When to Use Commas 

 Mouse-over the commas for a pop-up explanation. Click on the commas for 

 further explanation of the rules of comma usage being used. 

If your computer is equipped with

PowerPoint, click on the PowerPoint icon to

the right for a brief PowerPointpresentation on comma usage.

Click  HERE for help with Powerpoint. 

Use a comma to separate the elements in a series (three or more things),including the last two. "He hit the ball, dropped the bat, and ran to first

 base." You may have learned that the comma before the "and" is unnecessary,which is fine if you're in control of things. However, there are situations when, if you don't use this comma (especially when the list is complex or lengthy), these

last two items in the list will try to glom together (like macaroni and cheese).Using a comma between all the items in a series, including the last two, avoidsthis problem. This last comma — the one between the word "and" and the preceding word — is often called the serial comma or the Oxford comma. Innewspaper writing, incidentally, you will seldom find a serial comma, but that isnot necessarily a sign that it should be omitted in academic prose.

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Use a comma + a little conjunction (and, but, for, nor, yet, or, so) to

connect two independent clauses, as in "He hit the ball well, but he ran

toward third base."

Contending that the coordinating conjunction is adequate separation,some writers will leave out the comma in a sentence with short, balancedindependent clauses (such as we see in the example just given). If there isever any doubt, however, use the comma, as it is always correct in this situation.

One of the most frequent errors in comma usage is the placement of acomma after a coordinating conjunction. We cannot say that the comma willalways come before the conjunction and never after, but it would be a rare event,indeed, that we need to follow a coordinating conjunction with a comma. Whenspeaking, we do sometimes pause after the little conjunction, but there is seldom

a good reason to put a comma there.

For additional information on coordinating conjunctions,

click HERE. See the note BELOW regarding the use of a

comma between two independent clauses when the second

independent clause begins with a parenthetical element or adverbial

clause. 

Use a comma to set off introductory elements, as in " Running toward 

third base, he suddenly realized how stupid he looked."

It is permissible to omit the comma after a brief introductory element if theomission does not result in confusion or hesitancy in reading. If there is ever anydoubt, use the comma, as it is always correct. If you would like some additionalguidelines on using a comma after introductory elements, click  HERE. 

Use a comma to set off parenthetical elements, as in "The FoundersBridge, which spans the Connecticut River, is falling down." By"parenthetical element," we mean a part of a sentence which can be

removed without changing the essential meaning of that sentence. The parenthetical element is sometimes called "added information." This is the mostdifficult rule in punctuation because it is sometimes unclear what is "added" or "parenthetical" and what is essential to the meaning of a sentence.

Appositives are almost always treated as parenthetical elements.

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  Calhoun's ambition, to become a goalie in professionalsoccer, is within his reach.

  Eleanor, his wife of thirty years, suddenly decided to openher own business.

Sometimes the appositive and the word it identifies are so closely related that thecomma can be omitted, as in "His wife Eleanor suddenly decided to open her own business." We could argue that the name "Eleanor" is not essential to themeaning of the sentence (assuming he has only one wife), and that would suggestthat we can put commas both before and after the name (and that would also becorrect), but "his wife" and "Eleanor" are so close that we can regard the entire phrase as one unit and leave out the commas. With the phrase turned around,however, we have a more definite parenthical element and the commas arenecessary: "Eleanor, his wife, suddenly decided to open her own business."

Consider, also, the difference between "College President Ira Rubenzahl voted torescind the withdrawal policy" (in which we need the name "Ira Rubenzahl" or the sentence doesn't make sense) and "Ira Rubenzahl, the college president, votedto rescind the withdrawal policy" (in which the sentence makes sense without histitle, the appositive, and we treat the appositive as a parenthetical element, with a pair of commas).

 As pointed out above (Rule #3), an adverbial clause that begins asentence is set off with a comma:

   Although Queasybreath had spent several years in Antarctica,he still bundled up warmly in the brisk autumns of Ohio.

  Because Tashonda had learned to study by herself, she wasable to pass the entrance exam.

When an adverbial clause comes later on in the sentence, however,the writer must determine if the clause is essential to the meaning of the sentence or not. A "because clause" can be particularlytroublesome in this regard. In most sentences, a "because clause" isessential to the meaning of the sentence, and it will not be set off with a comma:

  The Okies had to leave their farms in the midwest becausethe drought conditions had ruined their farms.

Sometimes, though, the "because clause" must be set off with acomma to avoid misreading:

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  I knew that President Nixon would resign that morning,because my sister-in-law worked in the White House and shecalled me with the news.

Without that comma, the sentence says that Nixon's resignation wasthe fault of my sister-in-law. Nixon did not resign because my sister-in-law worked in the White House, so we set off that clause to makethe meaning clearly parenthetical. 

When a parenthetical element  — an interjection, adverbial modifier, or even anadverbial clause — follows a coordinating conjunction used to connect twoindependent clauses, we do not put a comma in front of the parentheticalelement.

  The Red Sox were leading the league at the end of May, butof course, they always do well in the spring. [no comma after "but"]

  The Yankees didn't do so well in the early going, but frankly,everyone expects them to win the season. [no comma after "but"]

  The Tigers spent much of the season at the bottom of theleague, and even though they picked up several promisingrookies, they expect to be there again next year. [no comma

after "and"]

(This last piece of advice relies on the authority of William Strunk's Elements of Style. Examplesour own.) 

When both a city's name and that city's state or country's name arementioned together, the state or country's name is treated as a parenthetical element.

  We visited Hartford, Connecticut, last summer.  Paris, France, is sometimes called "The City of Lights."

When the state becomes a possessive form, this rule is no longer followed:

  Hartford, Connecticut's investment in the insurance industryis well known.

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Also, when the state or country's name becomes part of a compound structure,the second comma is dropped:

  Heublein, a Hartford, Connecticut-based company, is movingto another state.

An absolute phrase is always treated as a parenthetical element, as isan interjection. An addressed person's name is also always parenthetical. Besure, however, that the name is that of someone actually being spoken to. Aseparate section on Vocatives, the various forms that a parenthetical elementrelated to an addressed person's name can take, is also available.

  Their years of training now forgotten, the soldiers brokeranks.

  Yes, it is always a matter, of course, of preparation and

attitude.  I'm telling you, Juanita, I couldn't be more surprised. (I told

Juanita I couldn't be more surprised. [no commas])

Use a comma to separate coordinate adjectives. You could think of thisas "That tall, distinguished, good looking fellow" rule (as opposed to "thelittle old lady"). If you can put an and or a but between the adjectives, a

comma will probably belong there. For instance, you could say, "He is a tall anddistinguished fellow" or "I live in a very old and run-down house." So you wouldwrite, "He is a tall, distinguished man" and "I live in a very old, run-down

house." But you would probably not say, "She is a little and old lady," or "I livein a little and purple house," so commas would not appear 

 between little and old or between little and purple.

Use a comma to set off quoted elements. Because we don't usequoted material all the time, even when writing, this is probablythe most difficult rule to remember in comma usage. It is a good

idea to find a page from an article that uses several quotations, photocopy that page, and keep it in front of you as a model when you're writing. Generally, use acomma to separate quoted material from the rest of the sentence that explains or 

introduces the quotation:

Summing up this argument, Peter Coveney writes, "The purpose and strength of the romantic image of the child had been above all to establish a relation between childhood andadult consciousness."

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If an attribution of a quoted element comes in the middle of the quotation, twocommas will be required. But be careful not to create a comma splice in so doing.

  "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make wordsmean so many things."

  "I should like to buy an egg, please," she said timidly. "How

do you sell them?"

Be careful not to use commas to set off quoted elements introduced by theword that or quoted elements that are embedded in a larger structure:

  Peter Coveney writes that "[t]he purpose and strength of . . ."  We often say "Sorry" when we don't really mean it.

And, instead of a comma, use a colon to set off explanatory or introductorylanguage from a quoted element that is either very formal or long (especially if it's longer than one sentence):

Peter Coveney had this to say about the nineteenth-century'suse of children

in fiction: "The purpose and strength of . . . . "

Use commas to set off phrases that express contrast.

  Some say the world will end in ice, not fire.

  It was her money, not her charm or personality, thatfirst attracted him.  The puppies were cute, but very messy.

(Some writers will leave out the comma that sets off a contrasting phrase beginning with but .)

Use a comma to avoid confusion. This is often a matter of consistentlyapplying rule #3.

  For most the year is already finished.

  For most, the year is already finished.

  Outside the lawn was cluttered with hundreds of broken branches.

  Outside, the lawn was cluttered with hundreds of broken

 branches.

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I have spent most of the day putting in a

comma and the rest of the day taking it

out. 

— Oscar Wilde 

Grammar English's Famous Rule of Punctuation: Never use only onecomma between a subject and its verb. "Believing completely and

 positively in oneself is essential for success." [Although readers might pause after the word "oneself," there is no reason to put a comma there.]

Typographical Reasons: Between a city and a state

[Hartford, Connecticut], a date and the year [June 15, 1997], aname and a title when the title comes after the name [Bob

Downey, Professor of English], in long numbers [5,456,783 and $14,682], etc.Although you will often see a comma between a name and suffix  — BobDowney, Jr., Richard Harrison, III  — this comma is no longer regarded asnecessary by most copy editors, and some individuals — such as Martin Luther King Jr. — never used a comma there at all.

 Note that we use a comma or a set of commas to make the year parentheticalwhen the date of the month is included:

July 4, 1776, is regarded as the birth date of Americanliberty.

Without the date itself, however, the comma disappears:July 1776 was one of the most eventful months in our history.

In international or military format, no commas are used:The Declaration of Independence was signed on 4 July 1776.

Use Commas With Caution 

As you can see, there are many reasons for using

commas, and we haven't listed them all. Yet the biggest problem that most students have with

commas is their overuse. Some essays look as though thestudent loaded a shotgun with commas and blasted away.Remember, too, that a pause in reading is not always areliable reason to use a comma. Try not to use a commaunless you can apply a specific rule from this page to do so.

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Concentrating on the proper use of commas is notmere form for form's sake. Indeed, it causes writers to review their understanding of structure and toconsider carefully how their sentences are crafted.

What Happened to the News? 

When television news started out back in the 1950s it occupied less than a

thirty-minute slot. Ten or fifteen minutes would be granted to local stations for 

their news and then the networks would say all there was to say about

national and world news in the remaining fifteen to twenty minutes. There

were very few advertisements during the news; it wasn't regarded as appropriate

to sponsor news about floods and fires and political disasters. Life musthave been simpler then.

 Nowadays many television stations set apart ninety minutes for local news alone

and that's just for the early evening news show. On March 17 1998 (St.

Patrick's Day), we watched a local news show in Hartford for one hour from 5

to 6 p.m. and kept track of what seemed to be really news and what was --

well not news.

First of all during this one hour of news there were 35 advertisements.

Among other things advertised there were ads for cars (sometimes competing

car companies would follow nose to tailpipe) fast-food chains mutual

funds feminine hygiene products cheese utility companies phone

service shampoos and deodorants. Most of the ads were fast paced

colorful slick and sometimes funny. They seemed to do a lot in their thirty

seconds. Graphically they were the most interesting part of the hour. In

addition there were ten advertisements apparently produced by the television

station itself that advertised programs and services of the station --

sometimes featuring what was coming up later that evening sometimes

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touting the virtues of the station's news team and weather forecasters.

Besides these self-advertisements the news program was also littered with

eight very brief "teasers" (we'll call them) announcing that "This is Connecticut's

 Newstation " and telling us what will happen "at the top of the hour" or "on

LateLine, tonight at 11." "Wait'll you hear this" preceded more than one break for 

ads. In both half-hour segments of this one-hour news program there were

"Forecast First" moments where the weather forecaster was apparently awakened

from a nap to tell us that later on he was going to give us his weather predictions.

He told us right then and there that it was sunny outside now but look 

out for later on tonight! (Details to follow, fifteen minutes later.) Incidentally

the weather forecast itself when we finally got to it was exactly the same

(with maybe a degree difference) at 6:20 as it had been at 5:50. It could just as

well have been videotaped but it wasn't. There were also teasers for the sports

commentator. He announced at two different times what he was going to tell us

about fifteen or twenty minutes later. At least the sports news was

different in the two half-hour segments.

Perhaps the most annoying moments in the news hour are the little moments

of conviviality and chit-chat between members of the news team, the little

asides of mutual congratulation and gratitude and commiseration (with the

various victims in the day's news) that are supposed to make us see how

wonderfully human the newscasters are. What must the fifteen-minute, get-it-

done-and-get-out newscasters of the 50s think of all this?

Surprisingly only one portion of the news this evening from 6 to 6:30

repeated exactly what we had already seen during the 5:30 to 6 segment.

Billed as a "follow-up " it was a videotaped redundancy. There were

however several features that didn't exactly feel like news. "Covering

Connecticut " amounted to several five- or ten-second blurbs on what

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 prominent people had done that day across the state. "People in the News "

was mostly about the shenanigans of Hollywood types, about a new film called

Primary Colors that seems to mock the White House scandals and about the star 

of Titanic being upset because some pictures of him, naked, are being published

 by a magazine. There was the nightly announcement of the winning Lottery

 Numbers (perhaps this is indeed important news for some people!), and

two segments about St. Patrick's Day parties going on in the capital city -- lots of 

 people drinking lots of beer. A "Health Beat" segment told us about pheromones

and perfumes and "Business Beat" told us something about Kathie Lee

Gifford's sweatshops.

Finally the news broke and there was a solemn and clearly labeled Editorial

Comment complete with the suggestion that the news station was willing to

entertain opposing viewpoints.

Whatever happened to the news? What we need to do now is to take a

stopwatch to the news hour and determine how much of the time is spent

actually reporting "hard news " the kind of thing that was put into that fifteen-

minute segment during the early days of television news. We're willing to wager 

that over a one-hour news show there is considerably less than fifteen minutes

occupied with the news. We can't say that our lives were simpler back then

but apparently we had less time to spend watching nonsense.

Answers

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Instructions: in each blank space in the sentences below, provide a comma,semicolon, or colon where appropriate or write a small-case "x" (without the

quotation marks) where none of those marks is appropriate.

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Punctuation: Fill-in-the-Blanks

Guide to Grammar and Writing

My father used to quote his favorite line from Shakespeare "This above

all to thine own self be true."It's hard to keep up with the new technologies in sound recording it

makes you wonder where it will all end.

Charlie Pete and Tony moved to Boston and bought a condo

near the art museum for $125 000.

In July 1997 Braxton moved to Dallas Texas.

So many institutions of small-town America -- the local drugstore the

corner theater the locally owned bookstore -- have gone the way of the

cowboy and vaudeville theatre.

I tell you Dr. Turveydrop these symptoms are quite alarming.

Philip Roth's novel  American Pastoral  won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.

Tashonda gave two reasons for moving to Arizona the high cost of rental

property in the east and favorable weather conditions out west.

The distinguished panel consisted of Ronald Pepin Professor of English

from Hartford Connecticut Peter Wursthorn Professor of 

Mathematics from Warwick Rhode Island and Kurt Simonds

Director of the Learning Center at Yale University.

The bumpy sinuous road and the incredibly loud obnoxious music

on the radio soon combined to give Marsupial a bad migraine headache

and a violently upset stomach.

Students have adopted the Learning Center as a computer lab they just

love those new machines.

There's nothing like a violent shocking detective story to put me into a

deep dreamless sleep.

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Hawthorne's most famous novel The Scarlet Letter  has been read by

countless schoolchildren.

Mrs. Bidwell told her students not to read the answers in the back of the

book.