How To Use Commas On The Act

And the reason is because the act will often put another word after a comma that is not one of these fanboys and that would.

How to use commas on the act. Commas can be a particularly tricky punctuation mark. There are some cases where you know you should use a comma such as when separating items in a list but there are other times when you might be unsure whether or not a comma is needed. That s a pretty broad goal and there are a lot of different uses for commas. Do not use one of each. In summary commas contribute to the structure within a sentence consequently helping readers interpret the sentence s intent.

The basic purpose of commas is to clarify relationships between phrases and clauses. Note the following examples. On the surface it looks like they should pair up but they shouldn t. When an adverbial phrase begins a sentence it s often followed by a comma but it doesn t have to be especially if it s short. Without it the aforementioned amazing concert lineup becomes a jumbled mess.

While there s some degree of flexibility in how commas are used it s important to have a clear grasp of the rules. When should you use the. So when you use a comma and what s called a fanboy this is an acronym to help you remember for and nor or but yet or so. Luckily you only really need to focus on a few main rules in order to do well on the act. The comma is the most important punctuation mark to know on the act english test but you ll also need to know the comma s cousins.

Use two dashes or two commas. Class because she was able to learn. The act constructed a sentence like this to trick you into thinking they need to pair up with each other. It has nothing to do with the dash. The remaining statements exemplify the use of a comma coupled with a coordinating conjunction to properly shift to the next point and indicate how the two clauses are related.

In fact this comma is optional. Colons semicolons and dashes. That is insert a final comma in front of the conjunction and as you are adding the last item in your list unless the final two words denote one thing. They re used for separate reasons. As a rule of thumb if the phrase is longer than about four words use the comma.