Audience Concerns: Punctuation Audiences require proper punctuation. While many audiences will not know the terminology for subordinate clause, they will probably have a sense of when something is punctuated wrong. With that in mind, I will be introducing some exercises to help with some of the weaknesses we have.
Your first punctuation assignment is to write ten perfect sentences. As you are aware the English sentence contains a subject, a verb and a complete thought. When you combine sentences using a conjunction (for, or, and, nor, but, so, yet), you must put a comma between the sentences before the conjunction. If there is not a sentence after the conjunction, it is not necessary to add the comma.
Example:
Technical writing helps a student in his career _and can be fun to learn.
Is there a comma before the conjunction in this sentence?
No. There is not because the subject after the "and" is technical writing; therefore, we cannot separate the verb and the complete thought from its subject.
So the correct way to write this if we want to use a comma and a conjunction is
Technical writing helps a student in his career, and it can be fun to learn.
Here are a couple of more. See if you can answer whether a comma is needed?
- I went to the store_ and I bought milk.
- Suliman is doing well at college_ but doesn't like bad handwriting.
- Mannie has many girlfriends_ but his favorite is Nita.
- Laughing is good for the soul_ yet not in front of the teacher.
If you are understanding this, your answers will be
- comma,
- no comma,
- comma,
- no comma.
Now onto your assignment. Please write ten sentences using conjunctions; in other words, you will be taking two different sentences and using a conjunction to combine them. Five should have commas, but the rest should not. If you have any questions, send mail to me, and I will try to answer your questions.
Still confused? Go to the puncutation pattern sheet for more help.