How To Use Commas When Making A List
If it s a fragment forget the colon and jump straight into the list.
How to use commas when making a list. Use commas to separate items in a list. Now look at this list. This list would be written like this. Please buy custard and banana muffins. The cake mix requires flour sugar eggs and butter.
When the last comma in a series comes before and or or after daughter in law in the above example it is known as the oxford comma most newspapers and magazines drop the oxford comma in a simple series apparently. It can stand on its own as a sentence. When correcting a comma splice that is when joining two independent clauses with a coordinating conjunction put the comma before and. Please buy bread and milk. Use commas before coordinating conjunctions that link independent clauses.
If your action items need to take place in a specific order use a numbered list rather than bullets. However when the list items themselves contain commas you can outrank those commas by using semicolons as the separators for your list items. Voiceover and so we can also use commas in lists to separate not just nouns like in this first one but also verb phrases. You should always use a comma when a fanboys conjunction connects two independent clauses. Here s how to give your dog a bath.
I need to go to the supermarket to buy eggs milk bread sugar and orange. Saturday morning started with a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs bacon sausage and french toast. The comma helps the reader. For more on this see rule 8. Look at this list.
Note that some style guides would not add the comma after the word eggs. The school has a vegetable garden in which the children grow cabbages onions potatoes and carrots. An independent clause is part of a sentence that has its own subject and verb. Without the comma custard and banana muffins could be one item. Using commas in lists you need to put a comma between the different items in a list as in the following sentences.