How to Correctly Use Commas in All of Your Writing
written by Alice Jansing
Even professional writers struggle with commas. In theory, everyone knows what a comma is—it’s a pause between parts of a sentence. In practice, though, it can be difficult to figure out where commas actually belong. Here’s a quick, user-friendly guide to help you master the comma in your everyday writing.
Last Updated
05/31/21
Chapters
4
Reads
356
Dependent and Independent Clauses and Why They Matter
Chapter 2
An independent clause is a group of words that can stand alone as a sentence. It contains a subject and a verb, and forms a complete thought.
Example: The kitten was cute.
Dependent clauses contain a subject and a verb, too, but they’re not complete thoughts. You can often spot them because they begin with conjunctions or prepositions, like after, as, before, if, since, that, though, unless, until, when, and while.
Example: After I visited the animal shelter.
After you visited the animal shelter, what happened? The dependent clause can’t stand by itself.
Although independent clauses can stand on their own, they don’t have to. You can join one or more independent clauses to form a compound sentence, and independent clauses can be added to dependent clauses to form complex sentences. That’s where understanding commas comes in handy!
Now that we have some background, let’s get into some ways that commas are used (and not used).
Confused about Conjunctions? Read my other book: Conjunctions
Example: The kitten was cute.
Dependent clauses contain a subject and a verb, too, but they’re not complete thoughts. You can often spot them because they begin with conjunctions or prepositions, like after, as, before, if, since, that, though, unless, until, when, and while.
Example: After I visited the animal shelter.
After you visited the animal shelter, what happened? The dependent clause can’t stand by itself.
Although independent clauses can stand on their own, they don’t have to. You can join one or more independent clauses to form a compound sentence, and independent clauses can be added to dependent clauses to form complex sentences. That’s where understanding commas comes in handy!
Now that we have some background, let’s get into some ways that commas are used (and not used).
Confused about Conjunctions? Read my other book: Conjunctions
