Leave the commas alone!

Published 04 April 07 02:16 PM

Yes, it is that time of semester - round one of marking. And while I've come across the usual range of problems - from the inability to write a complete sentence, to not-Earth logic that makes my head hurt, and footnotes and in-text referencing in the same document - the theme for this year is hideously high levels of comma abuse.

Some basic facts everyone should know about commas:

  • They are pretty. That is not an excuse for sprinkling them throughout your writing for no purpose other than ornamentation.
  • When you have ten or more commas in a sentence, they are not going to help the reader make sense of your writing. Lose some commas or break up the sentence. Or just don't go there to start with.
  • When using commas to insert a clause into a sentence, put the second comma in! Single commas can get lonely!
  • Subsituting a comma for a full stop doesn't work.
  • Nonetheless, commas do help the reader to understand what the hell you are on about, so use them when they are needed.

 If this keeps up I'm going to start a Royal Society for the Protection of Commas (RSPC) along the lines of the Apostrophe Protection Society.
 

by Karen.Hall
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# robyn.owens said on April 4, 2007 4:40 PM:

Comma Rules:

1. When the subject is the same for both clauses in a sentence, and the subject is expressed only once, then no comma is needed.

Example: Knuth's writings are entertaining and full of interesting examples.

2. When the subject is the same for both clauses and is expressed only once, a comma is useful when the connective is "but".

Example: Knuth's writings are entertaining, but are lacking in interesting examples.

3. When the subject is expressed once more, use a comma before a connecting "and" and "but".

Example: Knuth's writings are entertaining, and they are full of interesting examples.

4. Place a comma before a conjunction, introducing an independent clause.

Example: Each node sums the inputs, and outputs a ‘1’ if the sum is positive.

5. In a series of three or more items with a single conjunction, use a comma after each item except the last (The Oxford Comma).

Example: Red, white, and blue are the colours of the French flag.

6. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.

Example: The best way to use this computer, unless you are playing games, is with keyboard data entry.

7. Do not break sentences in two, using full-stops where commas should be used.

Example (this is wrong; the second "sentence" is not a sentence): Knuth is an entertaining writer. A man with a wonderful repertoire of examples.

8. Do not join independent clauses by a comma when each clause is grammatically complete. Use a semi-colon where you could just as well use a full-stop.

Example: Knuth's writings are entertaining; they are full of interesting examples.

9. If a list contains commas within the items, use semi-colons as the list separator.

Example: The data include binary, floating, and complex images; integers and reals; and arrays of images.

# Karen.Hall said on April 5, 2007 11:33 AM:

Thank Robyn! I'm planning to play 'place the comma in the sentence' (like place the tail on the donkey, but hopefully more educational) when I hand the assignments, so we will see how that goes.

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About Karen.Hall

I've recently submitted my PhD thesis, titled 'Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality', for examination. In the meantime, I'm teaching in the discipline of Communication Studies at UWA and starting a new project on medievalism and media through a Whitfeld Fellowship.