![]() The coordinating conjunction, " but," must also be preceded by a comma.įor more information on such constructions, see our page on serial commas.īreaking down a sentence into grammatical units and making sure the commas are placed correctly can be tricky, but remember that, the more care you take with your writing, the less work readers will have to do to understand it. The compound subject is a list, which requires commas both predicates are also lists of verbs and so require commas.Yes: Alice, the Hatter, and the March Hare drank tea, ate bread and butter, and were altogether mad, but the Dormouse simply closed his eyes, rolled over, and went back to sleep.Yes: Alice and the Hatter drank tea and ate bread and butter, but the Dormouse slept and snored.While the coordinating conjunction between the two clauses (" but") requires a comma, both predicates-sets of verbs-are just two items joined by “and,” which does not require a comma.No: Alice and the Hatter drank tea, and ate bread and butter, but the Dormouse slept, and snored.Remember that a clause is a subject–verb unit that can comprise multiple subjects and verbs (known as compound subjects and predicates). Take care not to insert commas within compound subjects and predicates unless creating a list of three or more items: Yes: the Walrus, the Carpenter, or the oysters.In this situation, they only need a comma if they form a list: Note that joining independent clauses in this way requires both the comma and the conjunction joining independent clauses with a comma alone is an error called a comma splice.Īlso keep in mind that, while all coordinating conjunctions can join independent clauses, some of them-and, nor, but, or, yet-can also join words and phrases. The Walrus and the Carpenter invited the oysters on a walk, and the oysters came along, so the Walrus and the Carpenter ate them.The March Hare dipped his watch into his tea, for he was altogether mad.Alice drank tea, but the Dormouse slept.FANBOYS commas are those that must come before a coordinating conjunction (indicated by the acronym FANBOYS) when it joins two independent clauses-statements that could otherwise stand on their own as complete sentences:
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