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Language Arts - Punctuation - Commas in Lists
Commas
Many times lists are included within a sentence. Commas are used to separate
the items in the list. Here's an example:
Mary packed her books, some paper, pencils, and her calculator.
This sentence states that Mary packed four items. Each item in the list is
separated by a comma. Here is another example:
Bart sold apples, peaches, pears, lemons, and limes at his fruit stand.
This time the list within the sentence includes five items. Notice that the
word "and" is used just before the last item, but no where else within the
list. Again the items in the list are separated by commas.
Inspect the following sentence:
Joe likes baseball, basketball football, and soccer.
Where is there a comma missing? After which word should a comma be placed?
ANSWER: The comma should be placed after the word "basketball" as shown
here:
Joe likes baseball, basketball, football, and soccer.
Lists can be lists of objects, lists of actions, lists of events, lists of
ideas, or even lists of lists (like this one). The thing to remember about
lists is that a comma goes between each item in the list. The thing that can
be tricky is deciding what counts as an item. Sometimes an item is one word
and other times an item can be more than one word. Consider this example.
Jill did her homework, her household chores, fed all the dogs, and practiced the piano.
Here are the items in a numbered list:
- her homework
- her household chores
- fed all the dogs
- practiced the piano
As you can see these items consist of two to four words and so placing
commas is not as simple as putting them after each word. You have to be able to
figure out what counts as an item in the list.
Here's another example:
Joe ate almonds, string cheese, macaroni and cheese, and candy.
As you can see the items in the list are not all single-word items. This
means that you have to understand where each item ends in order to figure out where to
put the commas.
Inspect the following sentence:
Joe likes seasame seeds almonds, red cabbage, and ice cream.
Where is there a comma missing? After which word should a comma be placed?
ANSWER: The comma should be placed after the word "seeds" as shown here:
Joe likes seasame seeds, almonds, red cabbage, and ice cream.
In order to correctly place the comma in this sentence, you must realize
that "seasame seeds" is an item and that "red cabbage" is another item.
Go to the quiz for this lesson
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