Comma Down

An appositive is a word or group of words that renames, elaborates on or otherwise provides more information about another word that appears close to it in a sentence—usually adjacent. Here’s a story with some examples: The Teaching Life My English teacher, a Harvard grad, thought he was the smartest guy in the school. One

Most people do fine with these commas–mostly because programs like Microsoft Word send you that squiggly line when it thinks you’ve omitted something. But you always have a choice, so I’m here to make sure that you make the right one.  Addresses When an address is part of a sentence, it needs to be punctuated

Let’s start by defining our terms. A CLAUSE is a group of words with a subject and a verb. The house is around the corner. that I want to buy The house that I want to buy is around the corner. (“That I want to buy” is information that is essential to the meaning of

When two or more subjects in a sentence share the same verb, we call it a compound subject. Chickadees and cardinals frequent my winter feeders. In this sentence, chickadees and cardinals both share the verb frequent. We call this a compound subject but, as you can see, no comma is needed because there are only

The subject of a sentence performs the verb. It usually falls at the beginning of a simple sentence, but it can follow introductory phrases with prepositions and participles and other introductory elements. (See previous post titled “Commas After Introductory Prepositional and Participial Phrases.”) In some cases, it can even follow the verb. Most of the

Commas with adverbs function much the same as commas in any other series of words. We have no choice but to separate a series of words of any category from each other with commas. But we have to ask ourselves two questions. Question #1 is covered in the previous post that I mentioned. If you’re

It’s customary to follow an introductory phrase with a comma unless it’s really short and doesn’t seem to need one. You’re never wrong to use one, so I would recommend taking the guesswork out of the whole ordeal by just using one there. This one is pretty easy. A noun in direct address just means

It’s customary to follow an introductory phrase with a comma unless it’s really short and doesn’t seem to need one. You’re never wrong to use one, so I would recommend taking the guesswork out of the whole ordeal by just using one there. The most common introductory elements you’ll probably encounter are participial and prepositional

I tend to organize elements in my sentences in sets of three—three items in a series, three-phrase predicates, three adjectives before a noun. I do it a lot because it creates a certain rhythm, it balances out the sentence and I like it. You can probably see that I’m doing it now, that it seems

Commas lift, separate and clarify. When you have a series of single words, phrases or clauses in a sentence, commas need to get busy. Here are some examples of commas in a series. The Oxford Comma      In the examples above, take note of the commas that follow the words “brownies,” “dishes,” “puppy” and “shower.”