DK HANDBOOK ©2008 Anne Frances Wysocki Dennis A. Lynch ISBN 13: 9780321420534 ISBN 10: 0321420535
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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 “The format is very inviting. • Sentence types and patterns I especially liked the comma section—the information is very • Parts of speech easy to follow. I wish I could use • Subject-verb agreement it immediately.” –Karen Taylor, Genessee Community • Fragments College (Advisory Board Member) • Comma splices • Run-on sentences • Dangling and disruptive modifiers • Shifts in voice • Shifts in tense • Punctuation • Mechanics
Copyright © 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc. PLEASE NOTE: These pages were prepared in advance of publication. Page numbers will not match those in published book. Additional changes may appear in the published book. COMMAS have four main uses. 1 2 USING COMMAS TO MAKE USING COMMAS TO HELP NUMBERS, PLACE-NAMES, AND INDICATE WHEN YOU ARE DATES CLEAR QUOTING (EXACTLY) THE WORDS To learn how and when to use commas OF SOMEONE ELSE in sentences like the following— To learn how and when to use commas in sentences like the following— Virginia’s population was 1,000,000 in 1830. It took eighty more years for “Hello,” she said, “can I help you it to reach its second million with that?” (2,061,612 in 1910). “The real problem with having a If you visit Emily Dickinson’s house robot to dinner,” argues Ellen in Amherst, Massachusetts, you Ullman, “is pleasure.” won’t see anything that truly belonged to Emily Dickinson. —or to learn about the following kinds of sentences (in which you aren’t quot- Abraham Lincoln was shot the night ing someone else’s words of April 14, 1865, and died the directly)— following morning. She asked if she could help me. ➔ GO TO PAGE 70. Ellen Ullman has argued that pleas- ure (or the lack of it) is why people don’t have robots to dinner. , ➔ GO TO PAGE 72. 68 PART 9 PERFECTING 34 USING COMMAS TO SEPARATE USING COMMAS TO BUILD WORDS THAT ARE PARTS OF SENTENCES THAT CONTAIN LISTS IN SENTENCES MULTIPLE PARTS To learn how and when to use commas To learn how and when to use commas in sentences like the following— in sentences like the following—
At lunch I ate potato chips, a peanut To hear him tell it, the bananas were butter and jelly sandwich, a banana, not exactly conducive to a happy two cupcakes, and some barbecued stomach. eel. Her father, who was born in Saudi The stinking, reeking water roiled Arabia, always longed for the hottest down the street. days in August.
She caught a cab, her breath, and Can you bring me the ladder, which then the flu. is in the backyard?
He was livid, he was angry, and he You’d think it would be enough that was mad. she earned A’s in all her classes, but my roommate, a biomechanical ➔ GO TO PAGE 74. engineering major, also wanted to have the highest GPA on campus.
He looked up at me, and he burst into tears. ➔ GO TO PAGE 80.
WHEN SHOULDN’T YOU USE COMMAS? ➔ GO TO PAGE 89.
COMMAS 69 NUMBERS COMMA USE 1 When you are writing numbers, use commas to separate the digits with USING COMMAS TO MAKE numbers higher than 999. NUMBERS, PLACE-NAMES, AND DATES CLEAR 1,000 (but 999)
2,304,504
$87,000,000,000
Note that the commas separate the long numbers into groups of three, mov- ing from the right to the left.
How had 9,125 relatively uneventful days passed so quickly, and how might I slow the days ahead?
In 1889 more than 3,000,000 acres in the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, were opened to non-Indian home- steaders, so that a territory that had held virtually no non-Indians in 1880 had 730,000 in 1900.
Here is comma use with large numbers when money is at issue:
On the $65,000,000 bond sale, Mor- gan and Belmont made a perfectly legal profit somewhere between $1,500,000 and $16,000,000; no one outside the banks knew exactly how much.
BUT! In the examples above, notice that there are no commas in numbers that represent years. It is also conventional not to use commas in street addresses: , 20419 West Second Street 70 PART 9 PERFECTING PLACE-NAMES DATES When you mention a location and the There are three common formats for larger place of which it is a part—such written dates in the United States: as a neighborhood in a city, a city in a state, a state or province in a country— separate the two place-names with 1 February 17, 1951 commas: When you include a full date—month, Neighborhood, city: Algiers, New Orleans day, year—put a comma after the day:
City, state: Houghton, Michigan On January 26, 1950, the Constitution of India was adopted and gave many State, country: Oregon, United States powers to the individual states. Province, country: Tangier, Morocco In sentences: 2 17 Feb. 1951 In 1948, Adrian Piper, an artist and This format is for citing webpages in philosopher, was born in Harlem, the MLA style: New York City. Hayden, Teresa Nielsen. “Yo, Wocky Fela Kuti was born in Abeokuta, Jivvy, Wergle Flomp.” Weblog entry. Nigeria, to a middle-class family. Making Light. 29 June 2005. 18 Feb. ■ ■ ■ 2006
“I’ve got to sing,” he said, hoarsely. In the first case, notice that the comma comes inside the quotation marks and before the “she said” phrase. In the second case, the comma comes after the (equivalent of the) “she said” phrase, before and outside the quotation mark.
WHEN YOU DO BREAK UP THE SENTENCES YOU ARE QUOTING You can break up the words of others for effect:
“Why,” asks Jonathan Burt, “should the rat be such an apt figure for horror and the target of so much hatred and loathing?”
Note that the first comma comes inside the quotation marks and before the (equivalent of the) “he said” phrase; the second comma comes after the (equiva- lent of the) “he said” phrase, before and , outside the quotation mark. 72 PART 9 PERFECTING WHEN YOU DON’T QUOTE A WHEN YOU DON’T QUOTE WHOLE SENTENCE WORDS EXACTLY This example use no comma before the When you refer to something that quoted words because the quoted someone else says but don’t use the words are not sentences. person’s exact words, you are using indirect quotation. In indirect quotation, She finally cobbled together some you do not use quotation marks or mumbo jumbo about a “man from commas. Very often, “that” introduces the West” who would “walk on the words that are being indirectly water” to the “East.” quoted. WHEN YOU QUOTE SEVERAL INDIRECT QUOTATION: SENTENCES Mr. Quiring has told me that essays The following example starts in the and stories generally come, organi- usual way, with a comma following cally, to a preordained ending that is “observed”—but notice that there are quite out of a writer’s control. two complete sentences being quoted, separated by a period. DIRECT QUOTATION: In class, Mr. Quiring said, “Essays The cop observed, “In the older and stories come to a preordained generations we didn’t even drink a ending organically—completely out beer. If your mom and dad smelled a of a writer’s control!” beer on you, oh my God, you might have to stay in for a year.” ➔ See pages 000–000 for help in thinking about how and why to In the next example, because the “he incorporate the words of others in your said” words break up the sentences academic writing. being quoted, the “he said” phrase is ➔ See pages 000–000 for more punctuated with a comma: information on using quotation marks to punctuate quotations. “It was the sociological nadir of the American spirit,” a Pepsi executive recalled. “Protests. Woodstock. Drugs. A surly and sullen generation occupying the dean’s office, burning it down—whatever it was. It was all that sixties stuff.”
COMMAS 73 ➔ The ability to use commas as we describe COMMA USE 3 on these pages is important in building parallelism, which is a form of list USING COMMAS TO SEPARATE building. See pages 000–000 to learn WORDS THAT ARE PARTS OF LISTS IN about parallelism. SENTENCES
In official grammar-speak, a list of words—such as dogs, tables, justice, snow, and imagination—is referred to as a series. , 74 PART 9 PERFECTING THE PATTERN 1 If you are listing only two nouns, verbs, phrases, or clauses in a sentence, here is the pattern to follow: and
For example:
She ran and dove into the water.
or
The audience sing-along was flaccid and unenthusiastic. 2 If you are combining three or more nouns, verbs, phrases, or clauses, here is the pattern to follow: ,,and 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.
The next pages include examples of using commas with lists of nouns, verbs, phrases, and adjectives. COMMAS 75 COMMA USE 3 continued USING COMMAS IN LISTS OF USING COMMAS IN LISTS OF INDIVIDUAL NOUNS INDIVIDUAL VERBS When you list only two nouns in a When you list only two verbs in a sen- sentence, no comma is necessary: tence, no comma is necessary:
A hat and gloves are necessary for The infant burped and grinned. winter. I learned to shovel coal and haul We find ourselves entering a realm clinkers at an early age. of fantasy and paradox. When you make a list from three or more When you make a list of three or more verbs, put a comma after each item in nouns, put a comma after each item in the list—except the last: the list—except the last: On that rooftop, she sees, imagines, A hat, gloves, and boots are neces- and remembers. sary for winter. Lawrence North High School basket- After spending the bulk of the after- ball center Greg Oden passes, blocks, noon talking with patients who had shoots, scores, rebounds, and smiles. no idea what year, month, or day it is, I myself felt rather disoriented.
Mr. Armstrong pleased most of the audience; he has timing, charisma, and plenty of eyeliner—and he’s not afraid to sweat.
The player is then set loose in a huge, colorful fantasy world with cities, plains, oceans, mountains, forests, rivers, jungles, deserts, and (of course) dungeons.
76 PART 9 PERFECTING USING COMMAS IN LISTS OF He thawed the frozen water, poured PHRASES AND CLAUSES it into hundreds of individual tanks, As with nouns and verbs, when you list and dropped in thousands of leopard three or more phrases or clauses, use a frog eggs collected in the Midwest. comma between each. BUT! Furious, Buffmeier walked through Use semicolons—and not commas— the front door, exited to the back, between a series of phrases that crossed the parking lot, and went themselves contain commas: into his shack. The four common principles that ran Gilligan’s work emphasizes through much of this thought relationships over rules, connection through the end of the Cold War over isolation, caring over violence, were a concern with democracy, and a web of relationships over human rights, and, more generally, hierarchy. the internal politics of states; a belief that American power can be used for The Egyptians mummified their dead moral purposes; a skepticism about in a complex process that involved the ability of international law and pulling the brain through the nostrils institutions to solve serious security with an iron hook, washing the body problems; and, finally, a view that with incense, and, in later dynasties, ambitious social engineering often covering it with bitumen and linen. leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own Imagine the least well-adjusted kid ends. in your school starting a breakaway clique of people whose manifesto includes a ban on the media, danc- ing, smoking, temperate climates, movies, drinking, rock ’n’ roll, having sex for fun, swimming, makeup, jewelry, playing pool, going to cities, or staying up past nine o’clock.
COMMAS 77 COMMA USE 3 continued USING COMMAS IN LISTS OF WHEN TO USE A COMMA OR “AND” IN INDIVIDUAL ADJECTIVES LISTS OF ADJECTIVES Use a comma or “and” to separate two When you put together two or more adjectives if you can change their order adjectives, you have to decide two without changing the meaning of the things: sentence. For example, the meaning of 1 whether or not to use a comma He was a thin, dapper fellow who between them preferred a suit and vest to ordinary clothes. AND isn’t changed when it is written as 2 whether to use “and” between them. He was a dapper, thin fellow who preferred a suit and vest to ordinary clothes.
or as
He was a thin and dapper fellow who preferred a suit and vest to ordinary clothes.
In these examples, “thin, dapper” are called coordinate adjectives, the name for adjectives whose order can be changed without changing the meaning of the sentence.
WHEN SHOULDN’T YOU USE COMMAS IN A LIST OF WORDS? Sometimes writers want to emphasize The example on the left is correct as is the length of time that goes into a the example below (which creates a series of actions, so they link the quicker sense of the time involved in words or phrases of a series with “and” all the actions): or “or”: Instead, we arrange the platters of Instead, we arrange the platters of food, remove bread from the oven, food and remove bread from the and fill cups with grape juice and oven and fill cups with grape juice wine. and wine.
78 PART 9 PERFECTING WHEN TO USE NEITHER A COMMA NOR WHEN TO USE A COMMA AND “AND” “AND” IN LISTS OF ADJECTIVES IN LISTS OF ADJECTIVES If you cannot rearrange the adjectives When you have three adjectives whose in a sentence without changing the order can be changed without changing meaning of the sentence, do not put a the meaning of the sentence, use the comma between them, no matter how same pattern as with the lists of nouns, many adjectives you are using: verbs, phrases, and clauses. Put a comma after each of the adjectives The prize for my banana costume except the last: was a radio designed to look like a box of frozen niblets corn. Reappropriate.com is a political, current-events, and personal blog This sentence doesn’t have a comma written from the perspective of a between “frozen” and “niblets” because, loud and proud Asian American in the United States, we would not say woman. “niblets frozen corn” or “niblets and frozen corn.” We have come to know zero Here is another example: intimately in its mathematical, physical, and psychological Three huge gray whales swam by. embodiments. Because “three” is describing how many “huge gray whales” this writer saw, “three” goes before the other adjectives. Adjectives that cannot be rearranged are called noncoordinate adjectives, and they do not have commas between them.
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 the doubts and temptations that preyed on idleness; it opened the way to deserved wealth and status; it allowed one to put the impress of mind and skill on the material world. At the advent of the factory system, few of the keepers of the Northern moral conscience did not, in some measure, believe in them all.
COMMAS 79 Here is a paragraph of simple sen- COMMA USE 4 tences:
USING COMMAS TO BUILD There was a racist bombing of a SENTENCES THAT CONTAIN church in Alabama. This happened in MULTIPLE PARTS 1963. ID magazine published an article about race in industrial design. The article discussed only one female African American design- er. Her name is Madeleine Ward.
Here are those sentences joined into one:
In 1963, in response to a racist bombing of a church in Alabama, ID magazine published an article about race in industrial design, but they discussed only one female African American designer, Madeleine Ward.
The ideas are more tightly woven together here, and (some would argue) they suggest more strongly than the individual sentences that something is wrong in the magazine article if it discusses only one female African American designer. If you decide that the audience and purpose motivating your writing require using sentences like the single- sentence example, then your sentences will need commas. When you write such sentences, which complicate the basic subject-verb-object structure, commas set off the sentence’s parts and help readers see and better under- stand how the sentence’s parts relate to , each other. 80 PART 9 PERFECTING There are two patterns for building such sentences: 1 2 USING COMMAS TO ADD ONE USING COMMAS TO ADD SENTENCE ONTO THE END OF ADDITIONAL INFORMATION TO ANOTHER THE MAIN IDEA OF A SENTENCE To learn how and when to use commas To learn how and when to use commas in sentences like the following— in sentences like the following—
Her body seems distracted, but her A parrot that cannot talk or sing is, mind is not. we feel, an incomplete parrot.
Every limb was broken, and he Kudos are due to Dwyane Wade, who ended up a triple amputee. pretty much single-handedly won the NBA Finals. Music has got to be useful for survival, or we would have gotten rid Without raising his voice above a of it years ago. murmur, this artist-thinker gives the condition of exile an existential, uni- Will I get a second chance, or am I versalist weight. supposed to remain a suspect for the rest of my life? The freshwater vertebrates, originally found in the slow waters of East One woman in each tent started din- India, are fast replacing the lab rat as ner, and the other finished securing a prime model for studies in genetics the tent and sleds for the night. and development. ➔ GO TO PAGE 82 TO SEE THIS ➔ GO TO PAGE 84 TO SEE THIS PATTERN. 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 kinds of writing. COMMAS 81 COMMA USE 4 continued
PATTERN 1 USING COMMAS TO ADD ONE SENTENCE ONTO THE END OF ANOTHER When you combine two sentences, the convention of written English is to put a comma and then a coordinating conjunction between the two:
coordinating one sentence one sentence , conjunction .
and } but or nor for so yet 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 .
When you combine sentences in this way, be sure to put a comma before the coordinating conjunction.
82 PART 9 PERFECTING Here are more examples. Note how each follows this pattern: sentence + , + coordinating conjunction + sentence . I tried to draw him out, but it sad- dens Hugh to discuss his childhood BE CAREFUL… If you were to take these sentences— monkey. In this section I focus on The sweaters I’ve made aren’t fluorescent biological samples. impressive specimens, but they’ve taught me a lot. The techniques may be applied to material science. Part of Goldstein’s work was con- cerned with the effects of brain dam- —and combine them without using a age, and he found that, whenever coordinating conjunction— there was extensive damage, there tended to be an impairment of In this section I focus on fluorescent abstract-categorical capacity. biological samples, the techniques may be applied to material science. Twenty years later there were 3,000 —you would have a comma splice. factory hands at Baldwin, and by Writing teachers notice comma 1900 there were more than 8,000. splices—so if you have been making this error without knowing it, now is It sounds like something you’d read the time to learn how to keep your on a movie poster, but sometimes writing teacher smiling at you. the sins you haven’t committed are Here is the version that will make all you have to hold on to. your writing teacher put away the red pen:
In this section I focus on fluores- cent biological samples, but the techniques may be applied to material science.
You can avoid comma splices by following the pattern shown on these two pages, joining two sentences with a comma and a coordinating conjunction. ➔ There are other strategies for mending comma splices; see pages 000–000.
COMMAS 83 COMMA USE 4 continued
PATTERN 2 USING COMMAS TO ADD ADDITIONAL INFORMATION TO THE MAIN IDEA OF A SENTENCE You can add additional information to a sentence at the beginning, middle, or end.
In my dreams, , on occasion, I play the drums .
, who have no , to the delight of my musical sense, neighbor downstairs
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 my neighbor 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 comma before and a comma after what you add. • When you add information at the end of a sentence, put a comma before what you add.
84 PART 9 PERFECTING WHAT DO WE MEAN BY NONESSENTIAL INFORMATION AT ADDITIONAL (OR “NONESSEN- THE BEGINNING OF A TIAL”) INFORMATION? SENTENCE Each of the additions to the sentence “I These examples show ways you can play the drums” to the left brings some- start a sentence with a nonessential thing new to the sentence, but if you phrase. Notice the comma in each: took away all the additions, you would still understand the basic idea of the Unlike many other producers who sentence. step to the mic, Kanye is also an If you can remove information from a extremely talented emcee who flexes sentence without harming a reader’s a relaxed but focused flow that's ability to understand the main point, never short on clever lyrics. then the information is additional. At the time of her husband’s In the following pages, we will refer assassination, Mary Todd Lincoln to such additional information as had already buried two young sons. “nonessential,” because that is the “official” grammatical term. Because data are always ambiguous, If you can remove a phrase from a it can be years before physicists feel sentence without changing the basic confident enough to publish meaning of the sentence, separate the potentially controversial results. phrase from the rest of the sentence with commas. Once upon a time, I was one of those nerds who hung around Radio Shack and played with LEDs, resistors, and capacitors.
If you use only one or two introductory words, you can omit the comma:
On Wednesday we conduct the experiment.
COMMAS 85 COMMA USE 4 continued NONESSENTIAL INFORMATION IN ■ ■ ■ THE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE The following sentences have phrases Short interjections of words can add a that come after nouns (very often conversational tone to writing; these names) and that explain what the noun interjections remind readers that a is; put a comma before and after all person wrote the words, so they can such phrases: help writers build relations with their readers. Put a comma before and after Aunty Lau, an accomplished weaver, such interjections: teaches Hawaiian culture in the schools. Dirt, it seems, is an important ingredient in particle physics My son, who is eleven, has a memory experiments. like wet cement.
Some sequels, as we all know, are Lascelles Brown, an athletic Jamaican better than the originals. butcher who had briefly dabbled in ■ ■ ■ boxing, first got interested in bob- sledding after seeing the 1993 Disney When you use explanatory words and film, Cool Running, based on phrases such as “though” and “for Jamaica's 1988 Olympic team. example,” they should be set off by commas: Scissors, a mundane object to which we are introduced in kindergarten, Once I’m awake, though, I tend to lie are a sophisticated tool requiring there wondering if I’ve made a terri- opposable thumbs and some ble mistake. dexterity.
Among Plains tribes, for example, The Space Shuttle, on track and on certain forms of design knowledge, schedule, came into view just after such as quill embroidery and bead- 5:53 Pacific time. work, are sacred. Nature, when abused, may react BUT! eventually like a tiger whose tail has Do not put a comma after “though” if been pulled. the word introduces a phrase:
Though she had already been executed, Joan of Arc was acquitted on July 7, 1456.
86 PART 9 PERFECTING STEPS FOR DECIDING IF INFORMATION IS ESSENTIAL OR NOT 1 For a sentence about which you Example 1 Example 2 are unsure, describe exactly what Your sentence emphasizes Your sentence focuses your is most important to you in the some events that took place readers’ attention on sentence: What exactly is it that in New York City. society’s responses to the you want your readers to take women who died in away from your sentence? Vietnam. 2 Identify in the sentence the All of this took place in This website is dedicated information that may or may not New York City, which is to women who died in the be essential. cruelly, insanely expensive. Vietnam War. 3 Remove the information you All of this took place in This website is dedicated identified in step 2. New York City. to women. 4 Ask yourself this question about If you are writing this If you are writing this the shortened sentence: Does it sentence to emphasize that sentence to focus your give your readers exactly what the events you are describ- readers’ attentions on you want them to take from the ing took place in New York society’s responses to the sentence? City and not to emphasize women who died in the cost of being in New Vietnam and not on all York City, the answer is yes. women, the answer is no. 5 If the answer is yes, then the All of this took place in information you identified in step New York City, which is 2 is nonessential and should cruelly, insanely expensive. be separated from the rest of the sentence with commas. If the answer is no, then the information you identified in step 2 is essential and should This website is dedicated not be separated with commas. to women who died in the Vietnam War.
COMMAS 87 COMMA USE 4 continued TIP NONESSENTIAL INFORMATION IF YOU ARE NOT SURE WHETHER AT THE END OF A SENTENCE INFORMATION IS ESSENTIAL OR These examples show some of the NONESSENTIAL, REVISE THE SEN- many ways you can end a sentence TENCE TO SAVE YOURSELF ANY with a nonessential phrase. Notice WORRY. where the comma is in these examples: In this sentence, is the phrase “seeing how quickly glaciers are melting” I used to play that song over and essential or nonessential? over in the dark when I was nine, the year I really became aware of my Scientists seeing how quickly gla- own existence. ciers are melting say we cannot ignore global warming. Ray has exceptionally large glasses, like an underwater mask, as if he You could make arguments in either never knows when he’ll have to do direction for the phrase, meaning that some welding or shield himself from the sentence will be ambiguous for its a solar eclipse. readers and hence potentially confus- ing. Shani Davis stood out as a rare Moving and rewording the phrase in African-American in a mostly white question can remove the ambiguity: sport, supported by a single mother who helped bulldoze any barriers When they see how quickly gla- she sensed were in front of him. ciers are melting, scientists say we cannot ignore global warming. Knitting is a skill that has come in handy throughout my life, mostly Sometimes rewording the sentence because I am so afflicted with the can help you create the sense you Protestant work ethic that I can’t want your readers to understand: bear to watch television unless I am doing something productive with my Those scientists who see how hands. quickly glaciers are melting are the most emphatic that global warming is occurring now.
88 PART 9 PERFECTING BEFORE INFORMATION WHEN NOT TO ESSENTIAL TO A SENTENCE delete I am writing about the woman, who USE COMMAS was nominated for president by the We list here kinds of sentences in Republican Party in 1964. which people are often tempted to use I am writing about the woman who commas—but for which the conven- was nominated for president by the tions of formal writing say not to. Republican Party in 1964.
Read the sentence without the part following the comma; if the sentence loses the meaning you want it to have, then you do not need the comma. ➔ For more information on making this decision, see pages 000–000.
BETWEEN TWO CLAUSES THAT ARE NOT INDEPENDENT CLAUSES delete Some people look at war, and see nothing but violence and chaos. Some people look at war and see nothing but violence and chaos.
➔ If you need help determining whether you are writing independent clauses, see pages 000–000.
BEFORE “THAN” delete Some scientists argue that there is no clearer indication of global warming, than Greenland’s melting glaciers. Some scientists argue that there is no clearer indication of global warming than Greenland’s melting , glaciers. COMMAS 89 WHEN NOT TO USE COMMAS continued BETWEEN A SENTENCE’S VERB AFTER A SUBORDINATING AND ITS SUBJECT OR OBJECT CONJUNCTION delete delete Everything good, is bad for you. Although, scientists no longer Everything good is bad for you. delete consider Pluto to be a planet, many still seek that little celestial body in One of the dominant themes in Amer- their telescopes. ican science policy this past year was, Although scientists no longer consid- how we can maintain a competitive er Pluto to be a planet, many still edge in a global economy. seek that little celestial body in their One of the dominant themes in Amer- telescopes. ican science policy this past year was how we can maintain a competitive ➔ Pages 000–000 list and explain edge in a global economy. subordinating conjunctions.
If you include more than one word in a BEFORE THE FIRST ITEM IN A subject, it can be tempting to put a LIST, OR AFTER THE LAST ITEM comma after it because you might read delete the sentence out loud with a pause E-mail spammers endure, legal after the subject—which can suggest harassment, exclusion from polite that a comma should go there. The society, and the disgust of nearly same temptation can happen with long every computer user. objects: If you were reading it out loud, E-mail spammers endure legal you would probably pause before the harassment, exclusion from polite object. But in writing, the convention is society, and the disgust of nearly not to put commas in these places. every computer user. delete BEFORE OR AFTER PARENTHESES delete Many accidents of geography, history, A political career, (or a legal one) is and biology, created our lopsided the surest ticket to a historical legacy. world. A political career (or a legal one) is Many accidents of geography, history, the surest ticket to a historical legacy. and biology created our lopsided world. or ➔ See pages 000–000 for the A political career, or a legal one, is conventional uses of commas with lists. the surest ticket to a historical legacy.
The convention is to use parentheses or commas around parenthetical com- ments, but not both. 90 PART 9 PERFECTING