Good morning and congratulations to Megan Altis for bringing over 30 new subscribers to the Editor’s Corner. Megan wins the coveted Amazon gift card! I’m also sending a huge thank you to Jim Vivoli who came in a close second and to everyone else who recommended the Editor’s Corner to their friends and co-workers.
Today we’re going to tackle a punctuation mark that is difficult for many people: the comma. It isn’t surprising that commas are tough. I have at least a dozen different rules for us to consider. Instead of throwing the whole list at you at once, I’m going to go through the rules one at a time and let you savor each one.
Most of these rules are from the Purdue OWL, one of my favorite grammar sites.
RULE: Use commas to separate independent clauses when they are joined by any of these seven coordinating conjunctions: and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet.
Examples:
The shop was out of frozen yogurt, so Mickey and Rachel decided to go home.
The Seahawks scored again, and the crowd went wild.
He rewrote the sentences a third time, yet the paragraph still confused the editor.
The wind was blowing and snow was falling, but Susan insisted on running the 5k without a jacket.
And for your entertainment:
Kara Church
Senior Technical Editor


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