Commas · 6:56am May 26th
My struggles with this Liliputian Tyrant (Grammarly Blog)
Separating items in a list of three or more ✔
Connecting two independent clauses with a coordinating conjunction ✘
Conjunctions are word-glue. Coordinating ones place words and clauses in relation to each other. Only when they connect clauses do they take the comma. My brain refuses to understand!
Cleo is a good singer, but she’s an even better dancer.
My teacher is tough but fair.
Setting apart non-restrictive relative clauses ✔
A clause that is nonrestrictive offers extra information about something you have mentioned in a sentence, but that information isn’t essential for identifying the thing you’re talking about. Nonrestrictive clauses are usually introduced by which or who and should be set off by commas.
Posey’s Cafe, which Chester recommended, is a fantastic restaurant.
Setting apart nonessential appositives ✔
An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that refers to the same thing as another noun in the same sentence. Often, the appositive provides additional information about the noun or helps to distinguish it in some way. If you could remove the appositive without changing the meaning of the sentence, it is said to be nonessential and should be set off with commas. If the appositive is necessary, it’s said to be essential and should not be set off with commas.
My partner, Angela
Setting apart introductory phrases ✔ ✘
I can spot these in the edit, but I drop them all the time.
Setting apart interrupters and parenthetical elements ✔
Setting apart question tags ✔ ✘
So easy to miss! But I do catch these in edits.
Setting apart names in direct address ✔ ✘
Pick this up in edits. Also, oh boy do I see a lot of mistakes like this on here :P
Separating parts of a date ✔
Separating parts of a location, like a city and its country ✔
Separating multiple coordinating adjectives ✔
Thanks Peace Petal! I now get this, I think.
Separating quotations and attributive tags ✔
I have many problems with freaking 'said-tags' but this isn't one of them, thankfully.
Do you struggle with any of these?
Post your comma comments below!
This isn't directly in response, but I do note that (at least on Fimfiction) American writers seem to like using commas more than we British ones. I'm not sure whether it's a US thing or a Fimfiction thing, but I often see something like:
To me, the comma in that sentence looks weird. It's decidedly non-standard in the (British) English I was taught.
5782956
ooh D: that comma does look weird. Also, what a friggin unnecessary 'now' that is. Maybe the problem is unnecessary adverbs of time and not commas!
ultimately, commas only bother me when their use genuinely structures language. Unfortunately, my conjuctivitis means I am frequently bothered by my own writing :P