The
big, strong, handsome man…
The
pretty, gentle, dark haired lady…
The fast, red, 1998 Honda…
Commas, Restrictive Clauses and Appositives
The comma is used to signal a pause or a partial stop in a sentence.
There are five grammatical situations where commas are required.
To
separate a series of adjectives:
|
The
big, strong, handsome man… |
|
The
pretty, gentle, dark haired lady… |
|
The fast, red, 1998 Honda… |
To
separate a series of adverbs:
|
The
old man moved slowly, deliberately painfully… |
To
separate an appositive:
|
Gigi,
my wife, visited her family in Ozamiz. |
|
My
brother, who has a broken arm, won the lottery. |
|
Our
youth group, which opposes abortion, wrote a letter to the |
To
separate a dependent clause from an independent clause when the dependent clause comes before the dependent clause:
Note: use a
|
|
|
I wont although I can. |
To separate words in a list.
|
We purchased bread, milk, noodles, eggs and soap at the market. |
|
In the basement we found old furniture, worn-out
clothes, broken toys, several picture albums. |
It
is interesting to note that some sentences
may contain clauses that could be either restrictive or non-restrictive
depending on the context. For example: My cousin who has a broken leg was
at the picnic. If the phrase who
has a broken leg is important to your meaning, don’t use commas and say My
cousin who has a broken leg was at the picnic.
If the phrase who has a broken leg is incidental, or extra
information, use commas and say My cousin, who has a broken leg, was at the
picnic.
IMPORTANT
TIP:
To help decide whether a clause is restrictive or
nonrestrictive, think of pairs of commas as handles. If you can lift out the
information between the commas and the sentence still makes sense, then it is a
nonrestrictive clause, and the commas are necessary. If you lift out the
information and the meaning of the main clause changes, the information is a
restrictive clause, and no commas are needed.