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>> INSTRUCTOR: Alright, so now we're going to talk about a punctuation problem,
specifically with commas and semicolons.
If you have ever wondered when to use a comma or a semicolon,
then you are in the right place. So we'll start off with commas.
You use a comma in between two independent clauses that are joined by
a coordinating conjunction—those are your FANBOYS. For instance:
"Harvey was a great man, and Leslie was an amazing woman."
What is a FANBOY, you ask? Well, FANBOYS are the coordinating conjunctions.
[These are] the words that connect two complete sentences together.
And FANBOYS is a mnemonic device: the F means "for," A means "and,"
N is "nor," B is "but," O is "or," Y is "yet," S is "so."
If you have a FANBOY in the middle of your sentence,
and you have a complete sentence on the left and a complete sentence
on the right, then you need to use a comma.
You also use commas when you are separating items in a series.
For instance: "You need nuts, bolts, and screws."
Now, you may have heard that the comma before the "and" in a series is not necessary.
It's called the Oxford Comma and some people tell you,
"Oh, you don't need it anymore."
Here's why I think you should use it. Take a look at this sentence:
"My greatest heroes are my parents, Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton."
I didn't realize that your parents were Oprah and Bill Clinton.
I didn't know that that had happened. I think that you meant was,
"My greatest heroes are my parents, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Clinton."
That's three separate entities, so you want to make sure that
you're using that comma before "and" in order to make that distinction.
Now, you also use commas after introductory phrases of more than two words.
Like "By four in the afternoon, traffic is scary on the bridges."
Now this one's a little sketchy, right? It's negotiable.
Because when an introductory phrase is brief and starts with a preposition,
you don't have to use [a comma] unless you want to.
For instance, "In 1798 the French had a revolution."
Do you need a comma? Well, how would you tell?
Would you pause while reading the sentence out loud?
If you would pause as you say "in 1798 the French had a revolution,"
then you want to add the comma.
And, just as a reminder: prepositions are words like "in" "of" "by" "to" "under" "over"
"at "with"
They usually tell you where something is in relation to something else.
It might be helpful to think of prepositions as they relate to a box:
You can be "in" the box, "on" the box, "near" the box, etc.
Prepositions are also those words like "during" and "with" that tell you a little about time.
But usually for our purposes, think of the box and that will get you through most prepositions.
Another use of commas: they separate dependent clauses
at the start of the sentence from the independent clause.
"Because her alarm clock was broken, she overslept and missed the bus."
Now, a quick note: A dependent clause is a group of words
that do not make a complete sentence. They usually begin with words like
"because" "until" "after" "since" "when" and "if".
If it's at the beginning of the sentence, you need to use a comma before the subject.
Like "After the accident happened, Sandy was never quite the same."
If the dependent clause is at the end of the sentence,
then you do not need the comma.
Like "Sandy was never quite the same after the accident happened."
So if you have your "after" right here in the middle of the sentence,
then you don't put a comma before it.
If your "after" is in the beginning, then you do need the comma.
So that's how you deal with that comma issue.
In addition, commas are used to set off transitional expressions,
and they're also used for parenthetical elements.
Those are things like "for example" and "by the way".
If it's extra information, you probably want to put some commas before and after.
When I use this word "set off" here, that means you put a comma before
and a comma after. So it's like setting it off literally;
you could cross it out and the sentence would mean the same thing.
So, moving on, this is where it gets tricky. Commas are used to set off appositives.
"Appositive" is a fancy name for those phrases which rename a noun or pronoun.
Like "Judy, our new pitcher" was late to the playoff game."
They don't need to know that Judy is our new pitcher to understand
that someone named Judy was late to the game.
So "our new pitcher" is not really necessary, so I can put commas on either side of it.
Now that's different when you have a one-word appositive.
If it's essential to the meaning of the sentence,
then you do not put commas. For instance:
"The poet Shelley wrote 'Ode to the West Wind.' The poet's wife, Mary, wrote Frankenstein."
If I put commas around "Shelley" here, then I have "The poet wrote 'Ode to the West Wind'
and that's really vague; I have no idea which poet you're talking about.
I would have to Google it. I guess it's not that hard to use Google,
but the idea here is that the sentence doesn't mean the same thing.
Whereas the point of this second sentence is that it was the poet's wife
who wrote Frankenstein. I don't need to know that her name was Mary
in order to understand that she is his wife, so this would be nonessential information.
Now, how to spot the appositive: Appositives can be interchangeable.
In other words, you can switch them around with the thing that is being renamed.
For example, if you say "Robert Cawdrey created the Table Alphabeticall,
the earliest English dictionary, in 1604" or you could say
"Robert Cawdrey created the earliest English dictionary, the Table Alphabeticall, in 1604".
So these two things, "earliest English dictionary" and "Table Alphabeticall" --
those are interchangeable. They're both naming the same thing, so they're appositives.
And you can literally flip them, that's how you can tell.
So if you have an appositive, you put some commas around it in the middle of your sentence.
Now this is the same rule but in a slightly different situation.
Commas are used with what are called "non-restrictive relative clauses."
That's a really fancy way of saying "information that is not necessary to the meaning of the
sentence."
Usually these are clauses that start with "which" or "that," but there are others.
So look at our example: you have Raj, who is a part-time aviator,
loves to tinker with machines of all kinds.
Okay. Do I need to know that Raj flies part-time in order to understand
the point of the sentence, which is that Raj loves to tinker with machines?
So this part right here--"who is a part-time aviator"--is not necessary.
So essentially I could cross it out and the sentence would still mean the same thing.
If you can cross something out, then you could also put commas before and after
and you maintain the meaning of the sentence.
So here's the rule again: A nonrestrictive (or nonessential) clause is a
group of words that is not critical to the meaning of the sentence.
You could just cross it out and the sentence's meaning won't change.
For instance, "Margie, my next door neighbor, bakes the most delicious cakes."
[compare with] "Margy bakes the most delicious cakes."
I don't need to know that she lives next door to me
in order to get the idea that she's a great baker.
So those are commas with nonrestrictive relative clauses.
For the other half of that same rule, if you have a "who" "which" or a "that,"
and it's necessary to the meaning of the sentence,
then don't put any commas around it. Let's look at this example:
"People who do their work efficiently make good students."
Well if I take out this phrase (or clause) "who do their work efficiently"
then what I'm left with is "people make good students".
That is not the same thing. I have changed the meaning of the sentence.
So I don't put commas around it. Removing it would change what the sentence says.
So if you say something like "Drivers who text while driving are dangerous on the road"
that's very different than "Drives are dangerous on the road."
Those are two separate thoughts. So I don't put commas here, before the "who"
or after the "driving" because that is essential information to the meaning of the sentence.
Honestly, if you can wrap your head around those rules, the ones we've covered so far,
most of your comma woes will disappear. The rest are pretty basic.
We move into the elements of an address;
you guys know how to do this, right?
You put a comma between the street and the city, and the city and the state.
But not between the state and the zip code. That's a weird, quirky comma thing
and people argue about why that is.
You put a comma between the elements of a date--December 12, 2004.
And you do not use a comma if you just have a single word address or just a date
like "He arrived from Baltimore in January and stayed awhile."
Then you don't need a comma there.
Moving on, these are commas you're probably familiar with.
If you're answering a question like yes or no,
"No, I don't like green eggs and ham!" put some commas.
If you have some sort of interjection, like an "ah" "oh" "hee" "woot",
put some commas around it because it's not essential.
You also use commas when you are addressing someone specific,
like, "Annie, where did you get your gun?"
This comma right here between "Annie" and "where" becomes very important.
Take a look at the sentence here. We have: "Let's eat, Adam!"
like "Adam, come in and eat!"
or "Let's eat Adam!" Things just got really creepy right there.
Now, you also use commas to contrast or to prevent confusion.
These are more stylistic commas. They're not grammatical commas.
So you have "Harold, not Roy, is my favorite player."
I want to emphasize that I like Harold, not Roy,
so I slowed the reader down with some commas.
The other one, take a look at this:
How many of you thought I was talking about the Beatles?
"To George Harrison". Well, I'm not. I'm saying,
"To George, [comma] Harrison was a great drummer."
So if you have a sentence like this where you're going to end up
putting two words together that you know are going to confuse people,
put a comma between the two to separate them just for clarification purposes.
Now there's only a couple more reasons for a comma.
The next one is coordinate adjectives. You don't run into this too often,
but you might wonder if you have to put a comma between "striped" and "long-sleeved"
here.
Well, here's the rule: coordinate adjectives are adjectives that
are important and they go together, right?
They have equal weight in the sentence. So the idea is that
you can reverse them without impacting the sentence's meaning.
So how do you spot coordinate adjectives? You flip them.
If the sentence means the same thing, they're coordinate
and you need to use a comma.
So how can I spot the coordinate adjectives? Well, you can flip them.
Does the sentence mean the same thing if they're reversed?
If so, they're coordinate. Put a comma in there.
Or you can also put in an "and" in between the words.
If the sentence means the same thing,
then those are coordinate and you would use a comma.
Let's try this out for a minute. Consider these two sentences:
"The brick red house was at the end of the street." versus
"The red brick house was at the end of the street."
Well, "red and brick" and "brick and red" are not meaning the same thing.
For instance, a "brick red house" refers to a color; "brick red" is a color.
The sentence with "the red brick house" refers to the material,
like the house is made out of red bricks.
So these two are not coordinate. I can't switch them because
when I switch them, I change the meaning, so no comma.
Take a look at this one here. We have
"The laughing, excited child played in the yard."
"The excited, laughing child played in the yard."
Doesn't matter, I can have them either way,
so I put a comma in between because those are coordinate.
Now this is all about comma abuse: when NOT to use commas.
You don't use a comma between the subject and verb.
Like "The hot and humid weather [comma], made Remi quite ill."
No, no, no. You don't need a comma there.
Another abuse of comma is that you don't use a comma between an independent
and dependent clause when the dependent clause is at the end of the sentence.
"Because" and the comma are in a fight; they don't like to be next to each other.
Essentially, you really have to be doing like crazy grammatical gymnastics
in order to justify a comma next to a because,
so if you have a "because" in the middle of a sentence,
don't put a comma there because they do the same thing.
Another abuse of commas is when you end up with a compound subject
or a compound predicate.
A compound subject just contains more than one thing.
Like "Tom and Nancy went on vacation." "Tom and Nancy" is your compound subject.
Compound predicate is when you have more than one verb.
"Sally bought a new dress and got a haircut." The words "bought a new dress"
and "got a haircut" makes up a compound predicate.
So you want to make sure that you're not putting commas between these things.
Like "The little boy from my reading class, and the tall girl with the red hair
went to the circus today." These are both my subject, so I don't need a comma here.
Or "The animals at the circus performed many tricks, and amazed the crowd."
Well, they're performing and amazing, so there's no need for a comma here.
So that is comma abuse. Moving on, we're going to talk briefly about semicolons.
Semicolons are more than the wink in your smiley face.
Bring them back! They have a reason more than just part of your emoticons.
Use a semicolon to connect two complete sentences that have closely related ideas.
Like "The concert was brilliant; the crowd gave the band a standing ovation."
"I said I'd do it; I didn't say when I'd do it."
So if you have two ideas that are closely related, you can put a
semicolon in between there. That also helps the sentence variety.
Or, use a semicolon to separate a series of items if the items are long
or if they contain commas.
Now, I don't know if you guys are Star Wars fans, but :
"The Millenium Falcon blasted out of Mos Eisley with Obi-Wan Kenobi,
the Jedi Master; Luke Skywalker, the untried farm boy; Han Solo, the scoundrel;
and Chewbacca, the hairy co-pilot."
If I have commas in here, then apparently, on the Millenium Falcon, we would have
Obi-Wan Kenobi, another Jedi Master, Luke, some other farm kid,
we would have Han, another scoundrel, and Chewbacca, and then
someone else who was hairy. That's way too many people for the
Millenium Falcon. So if you have a list, chunk it up with semicolons.
In addition, you use a semicolon to separate two complete sentences
joined with transitional phrases, like "on the other hand", "in fact", "for example".
You put a semicolon before it and a comma after.
In addition, you have to use a semicolon to separate two complete sentences
joined with conjunctive adverbs such as "also", "anyway", "finally",
"hence", "however" "instead" "next" "therefore"
and it's the same rule: semicolon before, comma after.