Category: TipTuesday

Sometimes you feel like you have nothing to say. In some cases, you can stop at that, and proceed with your day. In others, you have deadlines looming and a necessity to say something — preferably something worthwhile. My tip for the day is to sit down, write whatever comes to mind or whatever you’re doing, and soon enough you’ll have ideas. Most of the time, I experience writer’s block and simply opt not to show up. However, simply sitting with my journal and writing whatever comes to mind tends to loosen those holds on my thoughts, and I find some great ideas. Give it a shot the next time you find yourself wordless.

Last week we discussed commas in their basic usage — to join clauses. This week we’ll talk about using them in lists. Now, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who love the Oxford (serial) comma, and those who don’t. I’m in the former camp. I find that the Oxford comma brings much more clarity to a sentence, even if we’re expected to assume the last item in the list is indeed part of the list — comma or no comma. For example:

“I like reading, writing, dancing, and drawing.”

Each item in the list is separated by a comma. Each comma can be assumed to mean “and.” However, we don’t write sentences that read like this:

“I like reading and writing and dancing and drawing.”

That’s just not proper. You could also write it this way:

“I like reading, writing, dancing and drawing.”

Sometimes, however, you’ll find that omitting the last comma leads to confusion. For example:

“I have three kinds of pizza including pepperoni, sausage and pepper and mushroom.”

What have I done here? I’ve left you wondering what the second and third pizzas are. Do we have sausage and pepper? Or do we have just plain old sausage? Do we have pepper and mushroom? Or just mushrooms? This is why I opt to always use the last comma. If you get into a habit of omitting that final comma, you may find yourself confusing your reader — not good if you’re submitting a paper for a grade or a business proposal. We’re not taking out an ad in the paper, nor are we confined by the editor’s need to save space for all the articles. In the digital age, we have more than enough room on the screen for that last comma. On a paper, your teacher or professor is counting words, not characters. If you’ve never been really sure about commas in lists, start practicing writing lists today. Take the Oxford comma out for a try. You may just find out what a lovely little partner it can be in all your sentences.

Ah, the lovely comma. Commas can be used in a variety of settings, but today we’re going to talk about conjoining two thoughts. We have sentences made of clauses. Clauses can be independent, forming a complete sentence, or dependent, needing more information to stand on its own. When we have two independent clauses, we can join them using a comma and a conjunction — forming a compound sentence. For example:

“We went out for pizza, and we had a great time.”

Both clauses could stand alone as separate sentences, but we’re trying to get across the point that the great time was had while going out for pizza. Here’s another:

“After work, we went out for pizza.”

The clause “after work” is an example of a dependent clause (among other things, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves yet). We’re telling the reader when we went out for pizza, but we’re not expressing a complete statement about it.

Then we have compound predicates — sentences with one subject and more than one verb. Many writers make the mistake of using a comma before every conjunction, but this is grammatically unsound. For example:

“We went out for pizza, and had a great time.”

See what I did there? I deleted the second subject, so now the second clause isn’t a complete sentence. Both “went” and “had” are attached to the first “we.” Corrected, the sentence should look like this:

“We went out for pizza and had a great time.”

Feel free to practice on your own. Create sentences, and play around with the structure. You’ll have your commas down in no time!

Welcome to Tip Tuesday! As a writer and English tutor, I’d like to share some tips to help you with your own writing. When I’m not participating in or hosting a prompt series, I’ll be sharing a tip each Tuesday. Here’s today’s tip: always reread your work. The quickest way to correct your work is by reviewing it. I have found errors in papers and articles over the years that could have been caught by the writer even before submitting it for review.