Warner Language Services

Hello All!

Well, as promised, here is another rule for comma usage!

Conditional sentences or, otherwise known as, “if” sentences:

I’ll go to the party if you go with me.

Conditional sentences are sentences discussing the consequences of certain actions. The above sentence is an example of a first conditional sentence, which generally refers to a potentially true condition.

It is made up of two parts:

I will go to the party – consequence clause/main clause

if you go with me. – condition clause/subordinate clause

As I have already mentioned previously when talking about subordinate clauses, starting a conditional sentence with the condition clause (or subordinate clause) is similar. If you start with the condition clause, you need to separate the two parts of the sentence with a comma. The above example does not do this because it starts with the consequence clause (or main clause). Turn it around, and you get:

If you go with me, I’ll go to the party.

Here are a few more examples:

If I had known the weather was going to be bad, I would have brought a sweater.

If I were you, I would call a lawyer.

If you heat water to 100° C, it boils.

So, that should be pretty clear now, shouldn’t it?

Hope it helps!

Julia

Hello All!

As requested, here is a bit more explanation on how to use a comma.

However, let’s first talk about punctuation in general. Basically, the idea of punctuation is to make a written text’s meaning clear and easy to understand for the reader. So, the purpose of a comma is to assist the reader in understanding what you, as the writer, want to tell them. I hope that when you look at it from this perspective, the whole “comma-thing” becomes more logical.

So, let’s start with the listing comma. A listing comma is used to separate items in a list. They help the reader understand that the items are separate and not one thing.

Here’s an example:

I am going to visit Mary, Jane and Jessica when I am in New Jersey.

The comma between Mary and Jane tells the reader that these are two separate people rather than one person called “Mary Jane”.

Not only the omission of a comma can confuse the reader, but also the use of a comma when it is not needed can change the meaning of a sentence. Here’s the well-known example Lynne Truss uses in her book on punctuation:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

‘Why?’ asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

‘Well, I’m a panda’, he says, at the door. ‘Look it up.’

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. ‘Panda: large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots, and leaves.‘

(Taken from Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_&_Leaves)

By adding a comma after the words “eats” and “shoots”, the reader understands that these are actions that are listed in subsequent order. Obviously, the words “shoots” and “leaves” are not verbs but nouns – which are what a panda usually eats.

A panda eats shoots and leaves.   

And that is what I am going to leave you with today! Next time, I’ll talk about something a little trickier with regard to commas.   

Have a good week!

Julia

References:

Truss, L., 2003, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, London: Profile Books, ISBN 1-86197-612-7

Hi Everybody!

I’ve been thinking about what kind of helpful language messages I could post, but not much has come to mind. I guess it’s the winter blues that are causing my brain to go soft. Anyway, then I figured, I’d let you do the work

If you are reading this and you have any English language related questions you would like some information on, then please send them to me! Just post a comment. I will have a look at it and try to reply to the best of my knowledge.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Julia