Basic Guidelines for Punctuation
Adapted from The Little, Brown Workbook, 7th ed., by Donna Gorrell, New York: Longman, 1998.
Sentences with Two Main (or “Independent”) Clauses
The bus stopped, but no one got off. [joined by a conjunction]
The bus stopped; no one got off. [not joined by a conjunction]
The bus stopped; however, no one got off. [using conjunctive adverbs, such as however, indeed, moreover, thus, and nonetheless]
The mechanic replaced the battery, the distributor cap, and the starter; but still the car would not start. [complicated; one of the main clauses already contains commas]
The mechanic’s duty was clear: he had to locate the problem. [more than a sequential connection; attention is drawn to latter clause]
Introductory Elements
* Modifiers [Most of the time these are set off with a comma, with the exception of short prepositional phrases. But note that even with a short prepositional phrase, clarity may require a comma, as in the last example.]
After the argument was over, we laughed at ourselves.
Racing over the plain, the gazelle escaped the lion.
To dance in the contest, he had to tape his knee.
Suddenly, the door flew open.
With 125 passengers on board, the plane was only half full.
In 1988 he won the Nobel Prize.
At three thoroughbred horses are eligible to run in the Kentucky Derby. [needs a comma after “At three.”]
* Absolute Phrases [a phrase that modifies the entire sentence or action of the sentence, not just a word or other phrase; note that these may appear in different places in a sentence, but are always set off with commas]
Its wing broken, the bird hopped about on the ground.
Interrupting and Concluding Elements
* Nonrestrictive Modifiers [those that do not have to be there for the basic meaning of the sentence to remain the same]
Jim’s car, which barely runs, has been impounded.
We consulted the dean, who had promised to help us.
The boy, like his sister, wants to be a pilot.
They moved across the desert, shielding their eyes from the sun.
The men do not speak to each other, although they share a car.
* Nonrestrictive Appositives [nouns that repeat or define another noun]
Bergen’s daughter, Candace, became an actress.
The residents of three counties—Suffolk, Springfield, and Morrison—were urged to evacuate because of a flood.
Our father demanded one promise: that we not lie to him.
* Restrictive Modifiers [descriptors that are directly related to the meaning of the main clause, that must be there for the sentence to retain its original sense or usefulness]
The care that hit mine was uninsured.
We consulted a teacher who had promised to help us.
The boy in the black hat is my cousin.
They were surprised to find the desert teeming with life.
The men do not speak to each other because they are feuding.
* Restrictive Appositives
Shaw’s play Saint Joan was performed last year.
Their sons Tony, William, and Steve all chose military careers, leaving only Joe to run the family business.
* Parenthetical Expressions
We suspect, however, that he will not come.
Jan is respected by many people—including me.
George Balanchine (1904-1983), who sometimes hummed throughout dinner, was a brilliant choreographer.
The zoo simulates animals’ natural environments (forest, desert, swamp, and so forth).
* Absolute Phrases
The bird, its wing broken, hopped around on the ground.
The bird hopped around on the ground, its wing broken.
* Phrases Expressing Contrast
The humidity, not just the heat, gives me headaches.
World problems are caused by social problems, not just economic ones.
* Concluding Summaries and Explanations
The movie opened to bad reviews: the characters were judged shallow and unrealistic.
We dined on gumbo, blackened fish, and jambalaya—a Cajun feast.
Items in a Series
* Three or More Items
Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons are all apes.
The cities singled out for praise were Birmingham, Alabama; Lincoln, Nebraska; Austin, Texas; and State College, Pennsylvania.
* Two or More Adjectives Before a Noun or Pronoun
Dingy, smelly clothes decorated their room. [In this case, you have “coordinate adjectives,” which modify the noun equally, which work in reverse order, and which can be theoretically joined by and.]
The luncheon consisted of only one tiny watercress sandwich. [Note that tiny and watercress are NOT coordinate adjectives and so commas are not used.]
* Introductory Series
Appropriateness, accuracy, and necessity—these criteria should govern your selection of words.
* Concluding Series
Every word should be appropriate, accurate, and necessary.
Every word should meet three criteria: appropriateness, accuracy, and necessity.
Pay attention to your words—to their appropriateness, their accuracy, and their necessity.
Punctuation
Commas
* Coordinating independent clauses with conjunctions
* Introductory and following elements, especially long or unclear ones
* On either side of nonrestrictive modifiers
Restrictive dependent clause: Rosie bought the car that Jack Nicholson once drove in.
Nonrestrictive dependent clause or phrase: Rosie bought the car, which Jack Nicholson had painted red, for a song. Rosie bought the car, which is red, for a song.
After we had discussed the trial, I asked about the other case that he was working on. [restrictive]
After we had discussed the trial, I asked about the Smith case, which was one I’d been working on before. [nonrestrictive]
* Enclosing interrupting and parenthetical elements
Industry as a whole, however, is still not sensitive enough to the issue.
If factory workers and farmers became more efficient, Soviet citizens were told this week[] they would get more domestic goods, food, housing, hospitals, and schools.
* In lists and series
Though it was a hot, sticky, nasty day, she looked cool in her fresh linen dress. [note that fresh modifies linen not dress]
[Sometimes when there’s just two, people leave out the comma: It was a hot sticky day. But emphasis is different, so you should keep this as a device.]
* Sometimes with very complicated compound predicates: [Not necessary:] Those who study gender may revise our concept of humanity and nature, and enlarge our sense of the human predicament. [Needed:] Those who study plants, animals, and microorganisms allow us to better know our world, our history, and our place in both, and enlarge our sense of the value of life.
Difference between comma and semi-colon, common confusions
* Semi-colon used to join independent clauses when there is no conjunction. He stared at his visitor; it was a dark night out. HOWEVER, sometimes when there is a matching structure of the clauses or a close relationship in their content, using just a comma is appropriate. Thus, confusion.
I was awed by this system, I believed in it, I respected its force.
Not only are women put off, they are also put down, numerically and otherwise.
Semi-colon
* to link coordinate clauses without a conjunction
* to separate units (of a list) that already need internal commas
Americans hated death, denied death, and spent lavishly on funerals; but they had not been gripped by today’s frantic illusion that diet and exercise will make death go away.
The people who stopped by my house this weekend were Marielle, who is a great cook and brought me some bread; John, who loves to visit my dogs, and his wife Georgia, a tiny speck of a woman; and Henry, my best friend.
Colon
* Between independent clauses, when the second one amplifies or comments on the first.
The reason we are here is not clear: we are very confused.
* Introductory uses, when a series is not introduced by an intro word or phrase or when it’s formally introduced by “as follows”
* Do NOT use a colon after less formal intro words (like, such as, for example, namely)
Dashes, parentheses, and brackets, etc.
* Parentheses separate out material that breaks up the main idea of a sentence (stronger than commas but not as strong as dashes; also slightly different kind of interruption)
* Brackets are used when you add your own words within a quotation, or when you have a parenthetical within a set of parentheses.
* Dashes interrupt a sentence dramatically or emphatically (= two hyphens)
* Hyphens a) join some compound words (a three-month-old baby, a cross-reference), particularly nouns and adjectives formed from more than one word); b) separate starting and ending numbers, dates, and scores; c) break words divided at the end of a line (your computer will do this automatically)
* Quotation marks and single quotation marks
a) direct quotations: He said, “I cannot understand what you want of me.” She paused, then she screamed, “Get out of here, you loser!”
b) However, if they are long (fifty words, four or five lines), then use a block quotation and DO NOT use quotation marks.
c) If there’s a quotation within a quotation, use single quotation marks for the inside quotation.
d) Titles of short works (stories, short poems, songs, TV and radio EPISODES)
e) While commas and periods usually go inside quotation marks, colons and semi-colons go outside. [examples]
Passive voice
Passive, again, is a characteristic that is often criticized as a personality trait. We tend to admire active people more than passive ones, and “passive voice” is often thought-of as an insult. However, it’s important to remember that sometimes, as eastern philosophies have long noted, sometimes it’s okay to sit back a little bit. There is nothing INCORRECT about passive voice, per se, but sometimes it can make your writing less effective. Why? (convolution, indirectness, etc.)
There are a number of unemployed people living in this town.
[A number of unemployed people live in this town.] shorter and gives them life
A number of specimens were looked at.
We looked at a number of specimens.
After he dented the car for the fourth time, Robert was grounded by his parents.
Robert’s parents grounded him after he dented the car for the fourth time.
Live coverage of shuttle launches is provided by CNN.
CNN provides live coverage of shuttle launches.
This depends on
a) context: what comes before and after that you want to connect this sentence to?
b) focus: what part of the sentence do you want to draw attention to?
c) convention: in certain science, engineering, and other ostensibly “objective” pursuits, passive voice is used so that the presence (or even the existence) of a subjective observer or experimenter is downplayed
Sentence Types
What’s a clause?
Any phrase that contains both a subject (noun) and a verb (predicate).
There are two main types of clauses in sentences: independent and dependent. What’s the difference?
This is very easy, but important: An independent clause can stand alone: He came home. A dependent clause does not stand alone, but is preceded or followed by an independent clause: When he came home, we cooked dinner. It is additional explanatory information that contextualizes the main clause of the sentence. It doesn’t make any sense to say by itself, “When he came home.” However, it does make sense to say, “We cooked dinner.”
Independent and dependent clauses can combine into four possible sentence types: simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex.
[IC] A simple sentence (like this one) consists of a single independent subject-predicate combination.
[IC] A compound sentence has two or more clauses of equal grammatical value; [IC] these clauses are joined by a coordinating conjunction, by a conjunctive adverb, or (as in this sentence) by a semicolon. [IC] A writer may decide, for reasons of rhythm or emphasis, to break a compound sentence into two separate simple sentences, [IC] and in such cases the only difference between the compound sentence and the simple sentence is punctuation.
[IC begun] A complex sentence, like the one [DC] that you are now reading, [IC continued] has at least one independent clause and one or more dependent, or subordinate, clauses, [DC] which function as nominals, adjectivals, or adverbials.
[DC] As the hyphenated term indicates, [IC] a compound-complex sentence (again illustrated by the sentence [DC] you are reading) combines the features of both compound and complex sentences: [IC] it contains two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses.
A compound predicate is not the same as a compound sentence. “I drive to the store and stop at the gas station,” has two verbs (drive and stop), which gives it a compound predicate, but there is no new subject, so it is NOT a compound sentence. Sometimes in paper margins I’ll write, “A new subject and verb takes a comma,” and perhaps that’s a good way to think of it.
Examples:
I ran a few errands and went to the lab. [simple sentence with a compound predicate]
Mary and I drank coffee at the Daily Grind. [simple sentence with a compound subject]
I ran a few errands, but Gigi drank coffee at Saint’s. [compound sentence]
Jack and I ran a few errands and drank coffee at Panera. [simple sentence with compound subject and compound predicate]
Be careful not to confuse new subject-predicate structures with verbs used as other parts of speech, as they are with participles, gerunds, and infinitives.
A gerund is a verbal noun using the “ing” form of the verb:
Running a hotel is an appealing idea.
Seeing is believing.
They wanted to discuss her quitting her job.
Sometimes phrases with gerunds do function similarly to dependent clauses:
In coming to an agreement, they had compromised on all points.
But it doesn’t have a separate subject.
A participle is also derived from a verb but doesn’t serve as an independent predicate.
Three types: present (ing), past (ed), and perfect (adds having)
They can be used as part of a normal verb with a vague time-relation: I have been asked to teach a different class. She has been seeing a man in secret.
They can also be used as adjectives: We are concerned about the coming event. It was freezing cold outside.
Or as a slightly different modifier: Following these clues, he found out his wife was having an affair.
The more general term infinitive refers to the general verb form that does not express tense, person, or number. “To go,” “to see,” “to catch,” etc. Sometimes they do appear without the “to”: I can see. We let him go.
They can function as subjects, as objects, as complements, and as modifiers (that is, as nouns, helping verbs, or as adjectives:
Subject: To sit and read was his idea of hell.
Object: She prefers to drink only after noon.
Complement: He seems to go out a lot.
Modifier: My friend is the man to see.
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