ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Commas Videos 16 videos
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 1, Problem 1. Choose the correct punctuation for this sentence.
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 1, Problem 2. How should we format this list?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 1, Problem 3. Is that comma being used correctly?
ACT English 1.5 Punctuation 438 Views
Share It!
Description:
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 1, Problem 5. What is the correct way to separate these clauses?
Transcript
- 00:03
Here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Rainy Days.
- 00:08
Although the weather turned rainy and cold, we decided to go to the park.
- 00:18
Well, look at what we have here. A dependent clause leaning on its friend the independent clause.
- 00:25
(Announcer voice) "Will dependent clause be able to survive on its own? Will independent
- 00:28
clause kick him out? Tune in next time, on the dependency project..."
Full Transcript
- 00:33
Alright, well maybe it's not quite that dramatic.
- 00:36
But we know that a dependent clause, as its name suggests, depends on another clause to keep it afloat.
- 00:42
"Although the weather turned rainy and cold," can't act as a sentence by itself,
- 00:47
so it's a dependent clause.
- 00:48
Let's try going through the answers... Will D work?
- 00:51
Well, the comma between rainy and cold is problematic. If you're just saying two items,
- 00:55
you don't need a comma in between them. What about C? There's no comma at
- 00:59
all. You can't just plop down a dependent clause and an independent clause next to each other.
- 01:04
They need something to stick themselves together. Commas are the superglue of clauses.
- 01:09
Let's look at the comma use in B.
- 01:12
A comma is a little pause when you read it. So this sentence, would be "Although the
- 01:17
weather turned, rainy and cold we decided to go to the park."
- 01:22
First of all it just sounds wrong. But there's also not a comma between the clauses, and
- 01:26
an extra one between turned and rainy that doesn't serve any purpose.
- 01:30
Now we're just left with A, and it looks pretty darn good.
- 01:33
No more random, extraneous commas, and the two clauses are separated by one.
- 01:39
Mission accomplished.
Related Videos
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 2. Where should the semi-colon be placed?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 1. How should this sentence be changed so that it is grammatically correct?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 2. How should we properly hyphenate the words in this sentence?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 4. Which choice best formats this list of items?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 1. Which choice of punctuation best completes the sentence?