It's amazing, isn't it? As soon as you know that you are
being assessed on something, it throws up a massive question mark in your mind
as to whether you actually know what you think you know.
Take the pre-course assessment essay I have to write to
get onto the copywriting course I chose here. Never have I doubted my use
of common punctuation quite so much!
And what was the source of my little punctu-breakdown?
Why, it was the lowly comma of all things.
I found myself reading and re-reading, deleting and
re-adding the little blighters until my page resembled a family of ants
doing a conga through an ink pad.
So I thought for my own benefit, as well as for anyone else
who might suddenly and inexplicably have lost all comma-nd of simple
punctuation, that I would recap on the uses of this, the full stop's taller and
less abrupt sibling.
When proofreading any sentence you’re unsure about, ask yourself
the following questions:
As examples, I turn
to things I have found myself saying to my toddler this week.
1. Am I displaying a list or series in my sentence?
E.g., “Would you like a blue beaker, a red beaker
or a green beaker?” (or any other sodding beaker – JUST PICK ONE!)
Oh, but hang on. Should there be a comma after the ‘red
beaker’, the penultimate item in the list?
The answer is technically yes, but often people don’t. Read
the sentence out loud and if you think it makes sense it probably does, if you
feel it would benefit from the extra pause put a comma in, it will not be
wrong.
There will be times when this last comma is vital to the
meaning of your sentence so you must be prepared to include it if necessary,
but the main thing is consistency.
(Useless fact – this final comma, if used, is know as a
serial comma or Oxford comma)
2. Is there a conjunction in my sentence?
For the non-grammar geeks amongst us that is a joiny bit.
Usually 'and', 'but', 'so' and 'or', but could also be 'nor' and 'for'.
These words are often used to join two parts of your
sentence that could make sense individually.
Put the comma just before the conjunction.
Put the comma just before the conjunction.
E.g., “You can have
the blueberries, but I wont let you shove them up your nose!”
3. Is there a bit in my sentence that could be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence?
These are known as parenthetical elements (parentheses are brackets)
If you read the sentence out loud, you should be able to
work out the bits that are unnecessary. An example of this could be a bit of
your sentence that clarifies the part immediately before it,
E.g., “Louis, the
cat, doesn’t really like it when you poke him in the eye.”
‘The cat’ could be removed from the sentence without
materially affecting its meaning, but including it makes it a little clearer.
The confusion comes, in my mind, when trying to combine
these last 2 ‘rules’.
E.g., “We can go out
for a walk, but, if I can help it, I wont let you jump in all the muddy puddles.”
This sentence has a conjunction (the ‘but’) and an aside
or parenthetical element (the ‘if I can help it’)
In this example, if you were following both rules you
would put a comma before the ‘but’ and before and after ‘if I can help it’.
However, if you read this out loud the sentence becomes stilted and doesn’t
flow.
Therefore, where you have what I like to call a ‘comma
collision’ - too many commas in the same
place, you need to rethink it - I tend to remove the middle one and see how it
looks then – say it to yourself in the mirror and you will feel and hear the
difference.
I.e., “We can go out for
a walk, but if I can help it, I wont let you jump in all the muddy
puddles.”
4. Is there an introductory bit in my sentence?
Often you will find yourself writing a sentence where the
first part is used to set the scene. This should be set off with a comma.
E.g., “Although I thought I had hidden the tupperware, you seem
to have found it and tipped it all over the kitchen floor again.”
You can also approach it by looking at whether the first
part of your sentence affects the whole of the rest of the sentence – if it
does it will need a comma after it.
If the beginning bit is short you may get away without
this comma, but it would not be wrong to add it if in doubt.
5. Am I describing something in my sentence?
If there is a noun (thing) preceded by 2 or more
adjectives (describing words) you will probably need a comma between the
adjectives. Ask yourself whether you could put an 'and' or 'but' in between
the words. If you could, then you will need a comma. It is rare that a comma is
not required.
Toddler: “Uh-oh. Wet foot.”
Me: “You appear to have just dropped a full beaker of
milk on my nice, clean floor.
‘Floor’ is the noun, and ‘nice’ and ‘clean’ are
descriptors of the floor. I could have said nice and clean (obviously
pre-milk incident, not post!), therefore it can be replaced with a comma.
It is very easy to just stick excess commas in willy-nilly. After all,
even the great Oscar Wilde was quoted as saying, “I have spent most of the day
putting in a comma and the rest taking it out.”
RIght at this moment I know exactly how he feels.
RIght at this moment I know exactly how he feels.
There are some specific rules, which should be followed
consistently, but the moral seems to be to read your text out loud and if you
feel that a pause is needed to improve the rhythm and flow of your sentence, or
to ensure that the reader reads it as you would wish, then a comma is unlikely
to be out of place!
As for whether I correctly used the comma throughout my
pre-course assessment essay - well that remains to be seen!
So, how many ‘deliberate’ comma-catastrophes can you spot in this post?
Check back to follow my progress...
Reminds of my tutor mentioning that he'd noticed in one of my papers that I knew the difference between its and it's...which would have been nothing, 'cept it was my first year university tutor!
ReplyDeleteHaha! Maybe you should write a guest post on apostrophes?!
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