I am awful with commas. When it comes to breaking down long sentences and breaking up prepositional phrases I get sooo confused. When I write informally I use "..." so I don't look stupid but I'd really love to learn all the comma rules before the big 11/01.
Examples of what I wrote for my advertising class that I got so confused with. Please correct this mess.:
1) "Upon first connecting to the website you see bright full color pictures of the top selling products, along with, a search engine and departmental drop-down bar that are easy to navigate."
Maybe I just like my sentences to be longer than they need to be. Maybe I have a deep rooted fear of punctuation. Maybe you can help me. Please help me syntax Nazis! (or... Please, help me syntax Nazis?)
----------
Every extra 500 words we type gets us 1% further to the finish!
10,402 / 50,000
Okt 12, 2008 - 23 10
I'm probably not one to give advice, since I overuse commas, but I do know a few rules about them. They can be used like dashes when putting a 'break' in a sentence. For example:
"Then, with his book under his arm, he ran forward."
In grade one and two, I was also taught that you put commas in sentences where a breath is to be taken. For example:
"She hurried across the room, not taking a moment to look back."
They are also used to list things, even in description. For example:
"The shirt was covered with pictures of tall, leafy palm trees."
As for your sentence:
1) "Upon first connecting to the website you see bright, full color pictures of the top selling products, along with a search engine and departmental drop-down bar that are easy to navigate."
Comma between 'bright' and 'full' because it's a list. Comma after 'products' because that's where you take a breath. No comma after 'with' because you are not taking a breath, nor excluding the phrase 'along with' from the original text.
To make it easier: read back the sentences to yourself, and where ever you find yourself taking a breath, put a comma. If there's a piece of text that has been injected into the sentence, see if the sentence makes sense without it. If it does, put commas around it. If it doesn't, then it doesn't need commas (but it may need them for other reasons).
Hope that helped!
96,868 / 50,000
Okt 12, 2008 - 23 34
I would make it: "Upon first connecting to the website, you see bright full color pictures of the top selling products, along with a search engine and departmental drop-down bar that are easy to navigate."
I would also put the next as "Please help me, syntax Nazis!"
Sometimes the use of a comma in a place is a stylistic choice and it can be put there or left out as desired, but sometimes it just sounds plain awkward with a comma in the wrong place.
----------Title: Breaking Light
Goal: Finishing this novel. (Probably be 100k-120k at this rate.)
Sanity level: Do you even need to ask?
5,217 / 50,000
Okt 12, 2008 - 23 55
A good rule of thumb is to put a comma where you would naturally draw a breath. If you are having problems with placing commas, try saying the sentence out loud and pay attention to where you pause for a beat. A comma beat is much smaller than a period beat, and perhaps harder to spot, but you can do it.
32,011 / 50,000
Okt 13, 2008 - 03 43
1) "Upon first connecting to the website you see bright full color pictures of the top selling products, along with, a search engine and departmental drop-down bar that are easy to navigate."
There are several instances where commas tend to be used - they're all listed in the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%8C#Grammar) and I'm going to refer to that. The first rule there that applies to your sentence is:
4. The comma is often used to separate a dependent clause from the independent clause if the dependent clause comes first.
"Upon first connecting to the website" is the dependent clause, so you can put a comma after "website" to set it off from the rest of the clause. The purpose here is to give the reader a brief pause, imitating speech.
Next up:
5. The comma is used to separate co-ordinate adjectives; that is, adjectives that directly and equally modify the following noun.
Here we're talking about "bright full color pictures". This one's tricky, because "bright" and "full color" aren't really co-ordinate - you cannot reverse their order. So I'd say that you don't need a comma here, but you probably need a hyphen between "full" and "color" because full describes the color and not the picture. However, you could use a comma to mark a pause if you preferred.
Finally, there's the question of whether to put a comma before "along". It's not technically necessary, but as the sentence is fairly long it could help to break it up. Short answer: it's up to you.
Technically, you don't have to have any commas at all in the sentence, but this would make it sound rather rushed. Your other options are:
"Upon first connecting to the website, you see bright full-color pictures of the top-selling products along with a search engine and departmental drop-down bar that is easy to navigate."
Or:
"Upon first connecting to the website, you see bright, full-color pictures of the top-selling products, along with a search engine and departmental drop-down bar that is easy to navigate."
Or anything between the two. Whichever you prefer.
(Note that the "are" in "that are easy to navigate" ought to be "is", as it's referring to the singular drop-down bar.)
Edited to add: There are annoying occasions where commas are obligatory, and one of those is setting off the name of the person you are directly addressing. So "Please help me, syntax Nazis" would be correct. (You could also put a comma after "please" for emphasis if you wanted.)
----------2007: 28,513 words
2005: 50,916 words
2003: 12,078 words
50,230 / 50,000
Okt 13, 2008 - 11 26
"Upon first connecting to the website you see bright full color pictures of the top selling products, along with, a search engine and departmental drop-down bar that are easy to navigate."
Upon first connecting to the website,
----------you see bright full-color pictures of the top-selling products,
along with a search engine and departmental drop-down bar that are easy to navigate.
><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><>
2004: Unday: WON -- 2005: Fortune's Fool: WON -- 2007: Hench: WON -- 2008: The Wey of Dolor: WON
19,827 / 50,000
Okt 20, 2008 - 04 23
The rule of putting a comma where you would take a breath was taught for decades in school, but, unfortunately, the teachers didn't seem to take into consideration that not everyone reads or says things aloud quite the same way. My students quote me this rule a lot, so I have them read a long sentence a number of different ways to see how many places a comma COULD be put in and how that would change the tone and intent as well as break some important comma rules, such as the one about not using a comma to separate a a dependent clause from an independent one if the dependent clause is at the end:
"She went to the store because she had no bread." No comma should be in front of "because" though this error shows up everywhere.
----------"Old age ain't no place for sissies."
Bette Davis
0 / 50,000
Okt 20, 2008 - 11 31
Personally, I disagree that it's an error.
From Bartleby:
From Fowler:
"I know he committed suicide, because his wife told me."
They sound completely different. They also *mean* a completely different thing. Basically, anywhere I might put a semicolon instead of the "because", I'd most likely put a comma before it.
Would that nuance be understood by everyone? No. Neither is the nuanced difference between "Mister Jones" and "Mr Jones". But the difference exists, and neither is an error in the correct place.
Chicago manual of style:
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Commas/Commas09.html
A. I disagree. Here’s the old example that comes to mind:
He didn’t run, because he was afraid.
He didn’t run because he was afraid.
In the first sentence, “because he was afraid” isn’t necessary; the main thing is that he didn’t run, and the reason is incidental. The second sentence, which omits the comma, is unclear. It might mean that he ran, but not because he was afraid. To prevent confusion, sometimes you need the comma.
Some more (collected from the internet):
"I knew Nixon would resign that morning because my sister worked in the White House and she called me with the news."
"It also takes less time, because electricians and other contractors can work simultaneously, rather than one after another."
"I am inclined to agree with Jane to the extent that John predicted the Temple’s fall, because the tradition is tightly anchored in our sources."
"clauses beginning with when, because, if, so that, and many more" (yes, it's a list: just showing there are multiple exclusions to this rule).
Prescriptivists make life painful for everyone. I recommend ignoring them, and writing the way you find comfortable. The language grows and develops through published works, so don't be afraid to push the boundaries.
To me, in my style of speech and writing, the difference between "she went to the store because she had no bread", and "she went to the store, because she had no bread" is that the latter, in making the second part semi-parenthetical, lends the lack of bread extra weight. Instead of an irrelevancy, it is now as relevant as the trip to the shops.
Not quite the difference between "she just popped out to the shops, she'll be back in a minute" and "they've eaten her out of house and home the buggers; she didn't even have bread!" - but that kinda thing.
[Edit: added quote blocks there for clarity.
----------I pause there in speech, so I put a comma there.
Or do I pause there in speech, because I put a comma there?
I put a comma before because, because it feels right.
And that "feels right" is where prescriptivists fail to understand language, because they cannot fit "so" and "because" into the same tidy mental box...]
Buddies welcome, scripts discussed, etc :)