Can i use comma before and

A dependent clause, on the other hand, is a clause that requires another, main clause in order to be understood. You can use the same trick as above to identify dependent clauses. Simply remove it from the sentence and see if it makes sense. But I digress. You do not. Again, there are two phrases here. All the items in the list are actually independent clauses. I like tigers. I like bears as well. Therefore, we need a comma before and. Sam tossed the ball, and watched the dog chase it. Sam tossed the ball and watched the dog chase it.

But wait! Arthur cooked and Melvin cleaned. Want to learn about other ways to use a comma? Check out our general guide to comma usage. Real-time suggestions, wherever you write. For example, "I lay under the powerful summer sun.

This often occurs with adjunct nouns, a phrase where a noun acts as an adjective describing another noun — like "chicken soup" or "dance club.

Read more: 9 ways to become a better speller, according to an expert. If you're trying to indicate a natural pause or inject your dialogue with some dramatic effect, commas can be your friend. Put whatever comes first in quotes, end that quote with a comma, and then end the attribution with a comma. This creates the grammatical equivalent of someone pausing while speaking — the commas make you stop at each clause, but let you know that the sentence is still flowing.

In the above sentence, a comma tells you that Scrooge and the extended McDuck clan are to jump in a pot of money. Without the comma, it would seem that multiple Scrooges were raking in the coins. As you may recall from above , an independent clause has a subject and a verb and can stand on its own as a sentence. Often, a coordinating conjunction will connect two independent clauses — like the word "but. But — and it's a big but — your middle school teacher may have told you to always throw a comma before "but.

You should only put a comma before "but" when connecting two independent clauses. As fun as it may be to say, the comma "splice" should be avoided.

A comma splice incorrectly joins two independent clauses, like:. That sentence contains a comma splice, and therefore it is incorrect. The two independent clauses "I went running" and "I saw a duck" could instead be separated by a period.

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