Punctuation Aid

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?

1. I went to the store_ and I bought milk.
2. Suliman is doing well at college_ but doesn't like bad handwriting.
3. Mannie has many girlfriends_ but his favorite is Nita.
4. Laughing is good for the soul_ yet not in front of the teacher.

If you are understanding this, your answers will be

1. comma,
2. no comma,
3. comma,
4. no comma.

Now click here for your assignment. 

Contents within this site are copyrighted by both the author of essays and/or Jan Strever. The documents may be used freely by educators in the classroom; however, publication of any of these materials unless authorized by Dr. Strever constitutes blatant copyright infringement. The contents within these pages are solely those of the author, and S.C.C. should not be held responsible. ©1995--2010.
Last revised: 01/18/11 by Jan Strever -- jstrever@scc.spokane.edu
Personal site: http://www.strever.us/