Language Arts Grade Five

Unit Ten, Lesson Four: Commas in Lists

  1. band
  2. stand
  3. random
  4. ground
  5. sound
  6. ignore
  7. vine
  8. vivid
  9. visit
  10. vista
  1. panoramic
  2. view
  3. altitude
  4. scenic
  5. trail
  6. organic
  7. dioxide
  8. national
  9. forest
  10. crest
Commas in Lists

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:
  1. her homework
  2. her household chores
  3. fed all the dogs
  4. 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.

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