WAHOO!
• Compound sentences
• After a sentence opener, subordinate ,
or dependent clause.
• To off-set nonessential information in
your sentence
• Setting off Additions at the end of
sentences
• To separate 3 or more things, actions,
or phrases
Commas In a Series
Use commas to separate a series of three or more
things, actions, or phrases. Commas in a series
separate items or actions so the reader can identify
each intended item. In other words, use commas as
separators to keep the items or actions in discrete
chunks and to ease communication.
WATCH OUT! You’ll also need a CONJUNCTION before
your last item in the series in addition to the commas,
unless you are writing a sentence for a staccato effect.
Let’s see what happens if we don’t
use commas ….
I don’t like rap but I do like Outcast Eminem BlackEyed Peas.
What’s missing? What does this sentence
communicate?
That’d would be one big superband, but I think they work better
separate.
Without commas and a
conjunction, it sounds like
Outcast, Eminem and Black-Eyed
Peas are all one item.
What I wasn’t used to was having his smell back, the
smoke from his Camel cigarettes, his Old Spice
aftershave, the shoe polish he used on his boots.
All those father odors, filling up the house. My
mother opened every window, waxed the wooden
furniture, sprayed room freshener in every corner.
She scrubbed the tiles on the bathroom floor,
scrubbed the dog’s water bowl, scrubbed her hair,
her hands, her face, shiny. Then she sat in her
convertible and wept it all away, all but the smell. “I
can’t scrub the air,” she said. And so he was there,
but not really. Where was he? [p. 29]
--- Kathi Appelt, My Father’s Summers
SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!?
=
MEANING