DK HANDBOOK - Pearson Higher Ed · 2019. 2. 20. · As the poet W. H. Auden put it, “The chances...

The following sample pages on Commas are excerpted from Part 9, Editing and Proofreading.

In addition to the material presented here, Part 9 also covers the following topics:

• Grammar• Sentence types and patterns• Parts of speech• Subject-verb agreement• Fragments• Comma splices• Run-on sentences• Dangling and disruptive modifiers• Shifts in voice• Shifts in tense• Punctuation• Mechanics

“The format is very inviting. I especially liked the commasection—the information is veryeasy to follow. I wish I could useit immediately.”–Karen Taylor, Genessee CommunityCollege (Advisory Board Member)

DK HANDBOOK©2008

Anne Frances WysockiDennis A. Lynch

ISBN 13: 9780321420534ISBN 10: 0321420535

Copyright © 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc.

PLEASE NOTE: These pages were prepared in advance of publication. Page numbers will not matchthose in published book. Additional changes may appear in the published book.

Excerpt begins on next page >>

,68 PART 9 PERFECTING

USING COMMAS TO MAKE NUMBERS, PLACE-NAMES, ANDDATES CLEARTo learn how and when to use commasin sentences like the following—

Virginia’s population was 1,000,000in 1830. It took eighty more years forit to reach its second million(2,061,612 in 1910).

If you visit Emily Dickinson’s housein Amherst, Massachusetts, youwon’t see anything that trulybelonged to Emily Dickinson.

Abraham Lincoln was shot the nightof April 14, 1865, and died the following morning.

➔ GO TO PAGE 70.

USING COMMAS TO HELP INDICATE WHEN YOU ARE QUOTING (EXACTLY) THE WORDSOF SOMEONE ELSETo learn how and when to use commasin sentences like the following—

“Hello,” she said, “can I help youwith that?”

“The real problem with having arobot to dinner,” argues EllenUllman, “is pleasure.”

—or to learn about the following kindsof sentences (in which you aren’t quot-ing someone else’s words directly)—

She asked if she could help me.

Ellen Ullman has argued that pleas-ure (or the lack of it) is why peopledon’t have robots to dinner.

➔ GO TO PAGE 72.

COMMAShave four main uses.

1 2

69C O M M A S

USING COMMAS TO SEPARATEWORDS THAT ARE PARTS OFLISTS IN SENTENCESTo learn how and when to use commasin sentences like the following—

At lunch I ate potato chips, a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich, a banana,two cupcakes, and some barbecuedeel.

The stinking, reeking water roileddown the street.

She caught a cab, her breath, andthen the flu.

He was livid, he was angry, and hewas mad.

➔ GO TO PAGE 74.

USING COMMAS TO BUILD SENTENCES THAT CONTAIN MULTIPLE PARTSTo learn how and when to use commasin sentences like the following—

To hear him tell it, the bananas werenot exactly conducive to a happystomach.

Her father, who was born in SaudiArabia, always longed for the hottestdays in August.

Can you bring me the ladder, whichis in the backyard?

You’d think it would be enough thatshe earned A’s in all her classes, butmy roommate, a biomechanical engineering major, also wanted tohave the highest GPA on campus.

He looked up at me, and he burstinto tears.

➔ GO TO PAGE 80.

3 4

WHEN SHOULDN’T YOU USE COMMAS? ➔ GO TO PAGE 89.

70 PART 9 PERFECTING

COMMA USE 1USING COMMAS TO MAKENUMBERS, PLACE-NAMES, ANDDATES CLEAR

NUMBERSWhen you are writing numbers, usecommas to separate the digits withnumbers higher than 999.

1,000 (but 999)

2,304,504

$87,000,000,000

Note that the commas separate thelong numbers into groups of three, mov-ing from the right to the left.

How had 9,125 relatively uneventfuldays passed so quickly, and howmight I slow the days ahead?

In 1889 more than 3,000,000 acres inthe Indian Territory, now Oklahoma,were opened to non-Indian home-steaders, so that a territory that hadheld virtually no non-Indians in 1880had 730,000 in 1900.

Here is comma use with large numberswhen money is at issue:

On the $65,000,000 bond sale, Mor-gan and Belmont made a perfectlylegal profit somewhere between$1,500,000 and $16,000,000; no oneoutside the banks knew exactly howmuch.

B U T !In the examples above, notice thatthere are no commas in numbers thatrepresent years. It is also conventionalnot to use commas in street addresses:

20419 West Second Street

,

71C O M M A S

PLACE-NAMESWhen you mention a location and thelarger place of which it is a part—suchas a neighborhood in a city, a city in astate, a state or province in a country—separate the two place-names withcommas:

Neighborhood, city: Algiers, New Orleans

City, state: Houghton, Michigan

State, country: Oregon, United States

Province, country: Tangier, Morocco

In sentences:

In 1948, Adrian Piper, an artist andphilosopher, was born in Harlem,New York City.

Fela Kuti was born in Abeokuta,Nigeria, to a middle-class family.

■ ■ ■

To put a multiline address—

Habitat for Humanity/Metro JacksonP.O. Box 55634Jackson, MS 39296-5634

—onto one line in your writing, putcommas between the sections:

Please send your donations to Habi-tat for Humanity/Metro Jackson, P.O.Box 55634, Jackson, MS 39296-5634.

Note that there is no comma betweenthe state and the zip code.

DATESThere are three common formats forwritten dates in the United States:

1February 17, 1951

When you include a full date—month,day, year—put a comma after the day:

On January 26, 1950, the Constitutionof India was adopted and gave manypowers to the individual states.

217 Feb. 1951

This format is for citing webpages inthe MLA style:

Hayden, Teresa Nielsen. “Yo, WockyJivvy, Wergle Flomp.” Weblog entry.Making Light. 29 June 2005. 18 Feb.2006 <http:// nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006498.html>.

➔ See pages 000–000 for more informa-tion on this use of dates.

3February 1951

If you are writing only the month andyear, you do not need a commabetween them:

In February 1912 La Follette deliveredan angry, rambling, and—accordingto some—drunken speech at animportant dinner for newspaper pub-lishers, extinguishing whatever slen-der chances he had had for gainingthe Republican nomination.


COMMA USE 2USING COMMAS TO HELP INDICATEWHEN YOU ARE QUOTING (EXACTLY) THE WORDS OF SOMEONE ELSE

When you embed someone else’s wholesentences into your own, use commasto separate the words you are quotingfrom the phrases that signal you arequoting:

“I’ve got to sing,” he said, hoarsely.

WHEN YOU DON’T BREAK UPTHE SENTENCES YOU ARE QUOTINGYou can put quoted words at the beginning or at the end of a sentence.

“Keep the hard hat on,” she said tome when we parked.

As the poet W. H. Auden put it, “Thechances are that, in the course of hislifetime, the major poet will writemore bad poems than the minor.”

In the first case, notice that the commacomes inside the quotation marks andbefore the “she said” phrase. In the second case, the comma comes afterthe (equivalent of the) “she said”phrase, before and outside the quotationmark.

WHEN YOU DO BREAK UP THESENTENCES YOU ARE QUOTINGYou can break up the words of othersfor effect:

“Why,” asks Jonathan Burt, “shouldthe rat be such an apt figure forhorror and the target of so muchhatred and loathing?”

Note that the first comma comes insidethe quotation marks and before the(equivalent of the) “he said” phrase; thesecond comma comes after the (equiva-lent of the) “he said” phrase, before andoutside the quotation mark.,

73C O M M A S

WHEN YOU DON’T QUOTE AWHOLE SENTENCEThis example use no comma before thequoted words because the quotedwords are not sentences.

She finally cobbled together somemumbo jumbo about a “man fromthe West” who would “walk onwater” to the “East.”

WHEN YOU QUOTE SEVERAL SENTENCESThe following example starts in theusual way, with a comma following“observed”—but notice that there aretwo complete sentences being quoted,separated by a period.

The cop observed, “In the older generations we didn’t even drink abeer. If your mom and dad smelled abeer on you, oh my God, you mighthave to stay in for a year.”

In the next example, because the “hesaid” words break up the sentencesbeing quoted, the “he said” phrase ispunctuated with a comma:

“It was the sociological nadir of theAmerican spirit,” a Pepsi executiverecalled. “Protests. Woodstock. Drugs.A surly and sullen generation occupying the dean’s office, burningit down—whatever it was. It was allthat sixties stuff.”

WHEN YOU DON’T QUOTEWORDS EXACTLYWhen you refer to something thatsomeone else says but don’t use theperson’s exact words, you are usingindirect quotation. In indirect quotation,you do not use quotation marks orcommas. Very often, “that” introducesthe words that are being indirectlyquoted.

INDIRECT QUOTATION:Mr. Quiring has told me that essaysand stories generally come, organi-cally, to a preordained ending that isquite out of a writer’s control.

DIRECT QUOTATION:In class, Mr. Quiring said, “Essaysand stories come to a preordainedending organically—completely outof a writer’s control!”

➔ See pages 000–000 for help in thinking about how and why to incorporate the words of others in youracademic writing.

➔ See pages 000–000 for more information on using quotation marks topunctuate quotations.


COMMA USE 3USING COMMAS TO SEPARATE WORDS THAT ARE PARTS OF LISTS INSENTENCES

In official grammar-speak, a list ofwords—such as dogs, tables, justice, snow,and imagination—is referred to as aseries.

➔ The ability to use commas as we describeon these pages is important in buildingparallelism, which is a form of listbuilding. See pages 000–000 to learnabout parallelism.

,

75C O M M A S

THE PATTERN

If you are listing only two nouns, verbs, phrases, or clauses in a sentence,here is the pattern to follow:

For example:

She ran and dove into the water.

or

The audience sing-along was flaccid and unenthusiastic.

If you are combining three or more nouns, verbs, phrases, or clauses, here isthe pattern to follow:

For example:

She grinned, ran, and dove into the water.

or

The audience sing-along was short, flaccid, and unenthusiastic.

This pattern can be expanded to include any number of items:

In the past week we had rain, hail, snow, and a desire for springtime.

and

1

2, , and

The next pages include examples of using commas with lists of nouns, verbs,phrases, and adjectives.


USING COMMAS IN LISTS OFINDIVIDUAL NOUNSWhen you list only two nouns in asentence, no comma is necessary:

A hat and gloves are necessary forwinter.

We find ourselves entering a realmof fantasy and paradox.

When you make a list of three or morenouns, put a comma after each item inthe list—except the last:

A hat, gloves, and boots are neces-sary for winter.

After spending the bulk of the after-noon talking with patients who hadno idea what year, month, or day itis, I myself felt rather disoriented.

Mr. Armstrong pleased most of theaudience; he has timing, charisma,and plenty of eyeliner—and he’s notafraid to sweat.

The player is then set loose in ahuge, colorful fantasy world withcities, plains, oceans, mountains,forests, rivers, jungles, deserts, and(of course) dungeons.

USING COMMAS IN LISTS OFINDIVIDUAL VERBSWhen you list only two verbs in a sen-tence, no comma is necessary:

The infant burped and grinned.

I learned to shovel coal and haulclinkers at an early age.

When you make a list from three or moreverbs, put a comma after each item inthe list—except the last:

On that rooftop, she sees, imagines,and remembers.

Lawrence North High School basket-ball center Greg Oden passes, blocks,shoots, scores, rebounds, and smiles.

COMMA USE 3 continued

77C O M M A S

USING COMMAS IN LISTS OFPHRASES AND CLAUSESAs with nouns and verbs, when you listthree or more phrases or clauses, use acomma between each.

Furious, Buffmeier walked throughthe front door, exited to the back,crossed the parking lot, and wentinto his shack.

Gilligan’s work emphasizesrelationships over rules, connectionover isolation, caring over violence,and a web of relationships overhierarchy.

The Egyptians mummified their deadin a complex process that involvedpulling the brain through the nostrilswith an iron hook, washing the bodywith incense, and, in later dynasties,covering it with bitumen and linen.

Imagine the least well-adjusted kidin your school starting a breakawayclique of people whose manifestoincludes a ban on the media, danc-ing, smoking, temperate climates,movies, drinking, rock ’n’ roll, havingsex for fun, swimming, makeup,jewelry, playing pool, going to cities,or staying up past nine o’clock.

He thawed the frozen water, pouredit into hundreds of individual tanks,and dropped in thousands of leopardfrog eggs collected in the Midwest.

B U T !Use semicolons—and not commas—between a series of phrases that themselves contain commas:

The four common principles that ranthrough much of this thoughtthrough the end of the Cold Warwere a concern with democracy,human rights, and, more generally,the internal politics of states; a beliefthat American power can be used formoral purposes; a skepticism aboutthe ability of international law andinstitutions to solve serious securityproblems; and, finally, a view thatambitious social engineering oftenleads to unexpected consequencesand thereby undermines its ownends.


USING COMMAS IN LISTS OFINDIVIDUAL ADJECTIVESWhen you put together two or moreadjectives, you have to decide twothings:

1whether or not to use a commabetween them

AND

2whether to use “and” between them.

WHEN TO USE A COMMA OR “AND” INLISTS OF ADJECTIVESUse a comma or “and” to separate twoadjectives if you can change their orderwithout changing the meaning of thesentence. For example, the meaning of

He was a thin, dapper fellow who preferred a suit and vest to ordinaryclothes.

isn’t changed when it is written as

He was a dapper, thin fellow who preferred a suit and vest to ordinaryclothes.

or as

He was a thin and dapper fellow whopreferred a suit and vest to ordinaryclothes.

In these examples, “thin, dapper” arecalled coordinate adjectives, the name foradjectives whose order can be changedwithout changing the meaning of thesentence.

Sometimes writers want to emphasizethe length of time that goes into aseries of actions, so they link thewords or phrases of a series with “and”or “or”:

Instead, we arrange the platters offood and remove bread from theoven and fill cups with grape juiceand wine.

The example on the left is correct as isthe example below (which creates aquicker sense of the time involved inall the actions):

Instead, we arrange the platters offood, remove bread from the oven,and fill cups with grape juice andwine.


WHEN SHOULDN’T YOU USE COMMAS IN A LIST OF WORDS?

79C O M M A S

WHEN TO USE NEITHER A COMMA NOR“AND” IN LISTS OF ADJECTIVESIf you cannot rearrange the adjectivesin a sentence without changing themeaning of the sentence, do not put acomma between them, no matter howmany adjectives you are using:

The prize for my banana costumewas a radio designed to look like abox of frozen niblets corn.

This sentence doesn’t have a commabetween “frozen” and “niblets” because,in the United States, we would not say“niblets frozen corn” or “niblets andfrozen corn.”

Here is another example:

Three huge gray whales swam by.

Because “three” is describing how many“huge gray whales” this writer saw,“three” goes before the other adjectives.

Adjectives that cannot be rearrangedare called noncoordinate adjectives, andthey do not have commas betweenthem.

WHEN TO USE A COMMA AND “AND”IN LISTS OF ADJECTIVESWhen you have three adjectives whoseorder can be changed without changingthe meaning of the sentence, use thesame pattern as with the lists of nouns,verbs, phrases, and clauses. Put acomma after each of the adjectivesexcept the last:

Reappropriate.com is a political,current-events, and personal blogwritten from the perspective of aloud and proud Asian Americanwoman.

We have come to know zero intimately in its mathematical,physical, and psychological embodiments.

WHEN SHOULD YOU USE SEMICOLONS IN A LIST?If you are putting together a list of complete sentences and want to emphasize that they build on each other, separate the sentences with a semi-colon instead of a comma:

Work made men useful in a world of economic scarcity; it staved off thedoubts and temptations that preyed on idleness; it opened the way todeserved wealth and status; it allowed one to put the impress of mind andskill on the material world. At the advent of the factory system, few of thekeepers of the Northern moral conscience did not, in some measure, believein them all.


COMMA USE 4USING COMMAS TO BUILD SENTENCES THAT CONTAIN MULTIPLE PARTS

Here is a paragraph of simple sen-tences:

There was a racist bombing of achurch in Alabama. This happened in1963. ID magazine published an article about race in industrialdesign. The article discussed onlyone female African American design-er. Her name is Madeleine Ward.

Here are those sentences joined intoone:

In 1963, in response to a racist bombing of a church in Alabama, IDmagazine published an article aboutrace in industrial design, but theydiscussed only one female AfricanAmerican designer, Madeleine Ward.

The ideas are more tightly woventogether here, and (some would argue)they suggest more strongly than theindividual sentences that something iswrong in the magazine article if itdiscusses only one female AfricanAmerican designer.

If you decide that the audience andpurpose motivating your writingrequire using sentences like the single-sentence example, then your sentenceswill need commas. When you writesuch sentences, which complicate thebasic subject-verb-object structure,commas set off the sentence’s partsand help readers see and better under-stand how the sentence’s parts relate toeach other.

,

C O M M A S 81

There are two patterns for building such sentences:

USING COMMAS TO ADD ONE SENTENCE ONTO THE END OFANOTHERTo learn how and when to use commasin sentences like the following—

Her body seems distracted, but hermind is not.

Every limb was broken, and heended up a triple amputee.

Music has got to be useful for survival, or we would have gotten ridof it years ago.

Will I get a second chance, or am Isupposed to remain a suspect for therest of my life?

One woman in each tent started din-ner, and the other finished securingthe tent and sleds for the night.

➔ GO TO PAGE 82 TO SEE THIS PATTERN.

USING COMMAS TO ADD ADDITIONAL INFORMATION TOTHE MAIN IDEA OF A SENTENCETo learn how and when to use commasin sentences like the following—

A parrot that cannot talk or sing is,we feel, an incomplete parrot.

Kudos are due to Dwyane Wade, whopretty much single-handedly wonthe NBA Finals.

Without raising his voice above amurmur, this artist-thinker gives thecondition of exile an existential, uni-versalist weight.

The freshwater vertebrates, originallyfound in the slow waters of EastIndia, are fast replacing the lab rat asa prime model for studies in geneticsand development.

➔ GO TO PAGE 84 TO SEE THIS PATTERN.

➔ The kinds of sentences we discuss here are part of the style of most academic and other nonfiction writing; see pages 000–000 to learn about other aspects of these kindsof writing.

1 2

For example,

We passed them buckets of water , and they threw the water onto the fire .

or

He swung his arms wildly , but the mosquitos still swarmed around him .

or

The molecules attach to this material , for they have proper affinity with it .


PATTERN 1

USING COMMAS TO ADD ONE SENTENCE ONTO THE END OFANOTHERWhen you combine two sentences, the convention of written English is toput a comma and then a coordinating conjunction between the two:

one sentence one sentence coordinatingconjunction, .

andbutor

norforsoyet

}

When you combine sentences in this way, be sure to put a comma beforethe coordinating conjunction.


83C O M M A S

BE CAREFUL…If you were to take these sentences—

In this section I focus on fluorescent biological samples.

The techniques may be applied tomaterial science.

—and combine them without using acoordinating conjunction—

In this section I focus on fluorescentbiological samples, the techniquesmay be applied to material science.

—you would have a comma splice.Writing teachers notice commasplices—so if you have been makingthis error without knowing it, now isthe time to learn how to keep yourwriting teacher smiling at you.

Here is the version that will makeyour writing teacher put away the redpen:

In this section I focus on fluores-cent biological samples, but thetechniques may be applied tomaterial science.

You can avoid comma splices by following the pattern shown on thesetwo pages, joining two sentences with acomma and a coordinating conjunction.

➔ There are other strategies for mendingcomma splices; see pages 000–000.

I tried to draw him out, but it sad-dens Hugh to discuss his childhoodmonkey.

The sweaters I’ve made aren’t impressive specimens, but they’vetaught me a lot.

Part of Goldstein’s work was con-cerned with the effects of brain dam-age, and he found that, wheneverthere was extensive damage, theretended to be an impairment ofabstract-categorical capacity.

Twenty years later there were 3,000factory hands at Baldwin, and by1900 there were more than 8,000.

It sounds like something you’d readon a movie poster, but sometimesthe sins you haven’t committed areall you have to hold on to.

.,Here are more examples. Note how each follows this pattern:

sentence + + coordinating conjunction + sentence

You can add the suggested insertions (some of which are adjective phrases,some adverb phrases) to the sentence above to build the following:

In my dreams, I play the drums.

I, who have no musical sense, play the drums, to the delight of myneighbor downstairs.

I play, on occasion, the drums.

Notice the pattern of comma use around the inserted information;

• When you add information at the beginning of a sentence, put a single comma after what you add.

• When you add information in the middle of a sentence, put a commabefore and a comma after what you add.

• When you add information at the end of a sentence, put a comma before what you add.


PATTERN 2

USING COMMAS TO ADD ADDITIONAL INFORMATION TO THEMAIN IDEA OF A SENTENCE

You can add additional information to a sentence at the beginning, middle,or end.

In my dreams,

, who have nomusical sense,

, on occasion,

, to the delight of myneighbor downstairs

I play the drums .


85C O M M A S

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ADDITIONAL (OR “NONESSEN-TIAL”) INFORMATION?Each of the additions to the sentence “Iplay the drums” to the left brings some-thing new to the sentence, but if youtook away all the additions, you wouldstill understand the basic idea of thesentence.

If you can remove information from asentence without harming a reader’sability to understand the main point,then the information is additional.

In the following pages, we will referto such additional information as “nonessential,” because that is the“official” grammatical term.

If you can remove a phrase from asentence without changing the basicmeaning of the sentence, separate thephrase from the rest of the sentencewith commas.

NONESSENTIAL INFORMATION ATTHE BEGINNING OF A SENTENCEThese examples show ways you canstart a sentence with a nonessentialphrase. Notice the comma in each:

Unlike many other producers whostep to the mic, Kanye is also anextremely talented emcee who flexesa relaxed but focused flow that'snever short on clever lyrics.

At the time of her husband’s assassination, Mary Todd Lincolnhad already buried two young sons.

Because data are always ambiguous,it can be years before physicists feelconfident enough to publish potentially controversial results.

Once upon a time, I was one of thosenerds who hung around Radio Shackand played with LEDs, resistors, andcapacitors.

If you use only one or two introductorywords, you can omit the comma:

On Wednesday we conduct the experiment.


NONESSENTIAL INFORMATION INTHE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCEShort interjections of words can add aconversational tone to writing; theseinterjections remind readers that a person wrote the words, so they canhelp writers build relations with theirreaders. Put a comma before and aftersuch interjections:

Dirt, it seems, is an importantingredient in particle physicsexperiments.

Some sequels, as we all know, arebetter than the originals.

■ ■ ■

When you use explanatory words andphrases such as “though” and “forexample,” they should be set off bycommas:

Once I’m awake, though, I tend to liethere wondering if I’ve made a terri-ble mistake.

Among Plains tribes, for example,certain forms of design knowledge,such as quill embroidery and bead-work, are sacred.

B U T !Do not put a comma after “though” ifthe word introduces a phrase:

Though she had already been executed, Joan of Arc was acquittedon July 7, 1456.

■ ■ ■

The following sentences have phrasesthat come after nouns (very oftennames) and that explain what the nounis; put a comma before and after allsuch phrases:

Aunty Lau, an accomplished weaver,teaches Hawaiian culture in theschools.

My son, who is eleven, has a memorylike wet cement.

Lascelles Brown, an athletic Jamaicanbutcher who had briefly dabbled inboxing, first got interested in bob-sledding after seeing the 1993 Disneyfilm, Cool Running, based onJamaica's 1988 Olympic team.

Scissors, a mundane object to whichwe are introduced in kindergarten,are a sophisticated tool requiringopposable thumbs and somedexterity.

The Space Shuttle, on track and onschedule, came into view just after5:53 Pacific time.

Nature, when abused, may react eventually like a tiger whose tail hasbeen pulled.


87C O M M A S

STEPS FOR DECIDING IF INFORMATION IS ESSENTIAL OR NOT

Example 1Your sentence emphasizessome events that took placein New York City.

Example 2Your sentence focuses yourreaders’ attention onsociety’s responses to thewomen who died inVietnam.

All of this took place inNew York City, which is cruelly, insanely expensive.

This website is dedicatedto women who died in theVietnam War.

All of this took place inNew York City.

This website is dedicatedto women.

If you are writing this sentence to emphasize thatthe events you are describ-ing took place in New YorkCity and not to emphasizethe cost of being in NewYork City, the answer is yes.

If you are writing thissentence to focus yourreaders’ attentions onsociety’s responses to thewomen who died inVietnam and not on allwomen, the answer is no.

All of this took place inNew York City, which iscruelly, insanely expensive.

This website is dedicatedto women who died in theVietnam War.

For a sentence about which youare unsure, describe exactly whatis most important to you in thesentence: What exactly is it thatyou want your readers to takeaway from your sentence?

1

Identify in the sentence theinformation that may or may notbe essential.

2

Remove the information youidentified in step 2.

3

Ask yourself this question aboutthe shortened sentence: Does itgive your readers exactly whatyou want them to take from thesentence?

4

If the answer is yes, then theinformation you identified in step2 is nonessential and should be separated from the rest of the sentence with commas.

If the answer is no, then theinformation you identified instep 2 is essential and shouldnot be separated with commas.

5


TIPIF YOU ARE NOT SURE WHETHERINFORMATION IS ESSENTIAL ORNONESSENTIAL, REVISE THE SEN-TENCE TO SAVE YOURSELF ANYWORRY.In this sentence, is the phrase “seeinghow quickly glaciers are melting”essential or nonessential?

Scientists seeing how quickly gla-ciers are melting say we cannotignore global warming.

You could make arguments in eitherdirection for the phrase, meaning thatthe sentence will be ambiguous for itsreaders and hence potentially confus-ing.

Moving and rewording the phrase inquestion can remove the ambiguity:

When they see how quickly gla-ciers are melting, scientists say wecannot ignore global warming.

Sometimes rewording the sentencecan help you create the sense youwant your readers to understand:

Those scientists who see howquickly glaciers are melting are themost emphatic that global warmingis occurring now.


NONESSENTIAL INFORMATIONAT THE END OF A SENTENCEThese examples show some of themany ways you can end a sentencewith a nonessential phrase. Noticewhere the comma is in these examples:

I used to play that song over andover in the dark when I was nine,the year I really became aware of myown existence.

Ray has exceptionally large glasses,like an underwater mask, as if henever knows when he’ll have to dosome welding or shield himself froma solar eclipse.

Shani Davis stood out as a rareAfrican-American in a mostly whitesport, supported by a single motherwho helped bulldoze any barriersshe sensed were in front of him.

Knitting is a skill that has come inhandy throughout my life, mostlybecause I am so afflicted with theProtestant work ethic that I can’tbear to watch television unless I amdoing something productive with myhands.

89C O M M A S

delete

delete

delete,WHEN NOT TOUSE COMMASWe list here kinds of sentences inwhich people are often tempted to use commas—but for which the conven-tions of formal writing say not to.

BEFORE INFORMATION ESSENTIAL TO A SENTENCE

I am writing about the woman, whowas nominated for president by theRepublican Party in 1964.I am writing about the woman whowas nominated for president by theRepublican Party in 1964.

Read the sentence without the part following the comma; if the sentenceloses the meaning you want it to have,then you do not need the comma.

➔ For more information on making thisdecision, see pages 000–000.

BETWEEN TWO CLAUSES THATARE NOT INDEPENDENT CLAUSES

Some people look at war, and seenothing but violence and chaos.Some people look at war and seenothing but violence and chaos.

➔ If you need help determining whetheryou are writing independent clauses, seepages 000–000.

BEFORE “THAN”Some scientists argue that there is noclearer indication of global warming,than Greenland’s melting glaciers.Some scientists argue that there is no clearer indication of globalwarming than Greenland’s meltingglaciers.


WHEN NOT TO USE COMMAS continued

delete

delete

delete delete

delete

delete

BETWEEN A SENTENCE’S VERBAND ITS SUBJECT OR OBJECT

Everything good, is bad for you.Everything good is bad for you.

One of the dominant themes in Amer-ican science policy this past year was,how we can maintain a competitiveedge in a global economy.One of the dominant themes in Amer-ican science policy this past year washow we can maintain a competitiveedge in a global economy.

If you include more than one word in asubject, it can be tempting to put acomma after it because you might readthe sentence out loud with a pauseafter the subject—which can suggestthat a comma should go there. Thesame temptation can happen with longobjects: If you were reading it out loud,you would probably pause before theobject. But in writing, the convention isnot to put commas in these places.

BEFORE OR AFTER PARENTHESES

A political career, (or a legal one) isthe surest ticket to a historical legacy.A political career (or a legal one) isthe surest ticket to a historical legacy.

or

A political career, or a legal one, isthe surest ticket to a historical legacy.

The convention is to use parentheses orcommas around parenthetical com-ments, but not both.

AFTER A SUBORDINATING CONJUNCTION

Although, scientists no longer consider Pluto to be a planet, manystill seek that little celestial body intheir telescopes.Although scientists no longer consid-er Pluto to be a planet, many stillseek that little celestial body in their telescopes.

➔ Pages 000–000 list and explain subordinating conjunctions.

BEFORE THE FIRST ITEM IN ALIST, OR AFTER THE LAST ITEM

E-mail spammers endure, legalharassment, exclusion from politesociety, and the disgust of nearlyevery computer user.E-mail spammers endure legalharassment, exclusion from politesociety, and the disgust of nearlyevery computer user.

Many accidents of geography, history,and biology, created our lopsidedworld.Many accidents of geography, history,and biology created our lopsidedworld.

➔ See pages 000–000 for the conventional uses of commas with lists.

DK HANDBOOK - Pearson Higher Ed · 2019. 2. 20. · As the poet W. H. Auden put it, “The chances...

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