Punctuation Part 1

Commas and Apostrophes.

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you what commas are.  That's a picture of one, right?  Well, yes it is, but that isn't the kind of comma I meant.  But all writers know what commas are. They're those pesky little marks, shaped a bit like tadpoles, that you know should go somewhere but you aren't always too sure where. 

Commas are a punctuation mark.  Much poetry today doesn't use much punctuation - line breaks can take the place of commas, for example - but it's handy to know where they should go, just in case you ever need them.

This should give you some idea where to put commas and where not to put them.  I'm also going to talk about apostrophes here. They can get very lost. 

OK.  Let's start at the beginning. Commas are part of Punctuation - oh! how that word can strike terror into the hearts of some poor souls. But fear not! Help is at hand.

Let me say at this the outset, though: I'm not going to use a whole lot of fancy grammatical language here; you can buy books on grammar if you want those. I want to make it easier to understand, not harder, so I won't be airily tossing around phrases like "adverbial finite clauses" or "asyndetically co-ordinated adjectives."   Trust me. 

Punctuation.

Punctuation is all about making what we write easier for the reader to understand. It is used to avoid ambiguity or confusion. That's obvious when talking about question marks or whatever you call  the ? where you live, but some things are less simple to understand, and commas are probably the biggest bugbear.

To start with, take that much used example: Woman without her man is nothing.

That's a very ambiguous phrase; it can mean one of two things, depending on how it's punctuated:

1) Woman, without her man, is nothing.
2) Woman! Without her, man is nothing.

See my point? Two quite opposite meanings.  It's all down to where you put the commas and other punctuation. 

Right, let's move on.

Why we use commas.

Writing is composed of words separated into sentences and phrases.  A sentence almost always contains a verb, the subject of the verb, and the object of the verb. There may also be adjectives, adverbs and other stuff which you can find out about another time. 

Did you notice how I put a comma between the words adjectives and adverbs? We do that when we list things. It makes it clear that it is a list:  I went to the store and bought apples, bananas, rhubarb, potatoes, etc etc.

Also when we use more than one adjective at a time, eg: It was a still, dark, frosty  night.
Now that could be written: It was a still, dark and frosty night.
It could even say: It was a still and dark and frosty night.

So you see what's happening here. The comma, in both those instances, replaces the word and.  In that sentence above you can see there is no comma after adverbs and before and. This is a British convention (as A, B and C). In American convention it is correct use to have yet another comma before the and as well (as A, B, and C),  except in journalism where the British (A, B and C) style is more usual. 

On the whole, American convention allows for the use of many more commas than the British normally use.  This is a matter of style and, as long as your meaning is being made clear, the rules can be regarded as somewhat flexible.  Publishers sometimes have their own house rules regarding style which you would need to follow in order to be published by them.

And or but

Commas are not normally found together with the words and, but, or, especially in a short sentence:

She asked if he wanted a drink but he said no.
I need a drink and something to eat.
Are you going to bed or not?

They can occasionally be found with but, and, or however, in order to emphasise a contrast, or alternatives:
I asked her to tell the chef that I couldn't stand garlic, but that this was no reflection on his cooking.
Nothing like that had been known before, or has been repeated since.

Another use of commas is to separate  off part of a sentence:
When she was able to move, to shake herself free again, she stumbled downstairs. 

The extra, explanatory, bit in the middle is between commas because it really isn't vital to the rest of the sentence. The bits before and after it would make perfect sense without it.

There are cases where putting a comma in allows the reader to pause and take a metaphorical breath, especially if the sentence is a very long one like this, but in shorter sentences it isn't necessary and would be too fiddly.  I didn't feel a comma was necessary before that final and there, but before the but it helped to make reading easier. 

As you can see, using commas very much depends not just on making the meaning clear, but in order to help the reader slow down a little, compose their thoughts. A sentence without any breaks, even if not very long, can be difficult to read - as in the very first example I gave, under the heading Punctuation.

When not to use commas.

This is a much more difficult one to write about, as it could go on indefinitely.  However, in general, the rule goes this way:

Do not put commas where they would break up a sentence into short nonsensical phrases. Look at what you have written, take each bit between the commas separately, and ask yourself whether it makes sense on its own.

Eg:  I am going, to see my mother.

I am going - where? when? It isn't enough on its own.  Neither is: to see my mother. The whole point of that sentence is: going to see; all of those words belong together and shouldn't be separated by anything: I am going to see my mother.

I (subject) am going to see (verb) my mother (object). That is a complete sentence. Without one of those parts it wouldn't be a proper sentence and the parts can't be separated, even by a comma.

It would be different if someone asks the question: "Where are you going?" and the reply is just "To see my mother," because in informal speech we do say things like that, but it isn't good grammar.

I see many examples like this, too many to list them here, but if anyone having a problem with this takes that rule of thumb and applies it, it should improve things considerably.

Now there you see me using the comma another way, putting one between it and it. Without the comma the sentence would be confusing, even though  - strictly speaking - the sense follows on.

Again, it's about making the meaning clear to the reader. And if you don't do that, there is little point in writing.

Apostrophes.

I'm going to move on now to apostrophes, which are simpy elevated commas.  And they sometimes work in a similar way to commas, but whereas commas can replace the word and, apostrophes replace missing letters when two words are shortened to one word.

Contraction

We all use contractions like: isn't (is not) can't (can not) and so on, and we understand that the apostrophe replaces the letters we've left out (there's another one - and another!)

Possesssion

Ok, so that's one use of them. Another is to imply possession.  Possession can be described by using the word of: That man of mine, the House of Usher, but another way is to use  ('s) (an apostrophe plus the letter s) to show possession: The bag is Sarah's.  It is John's paper. And so on.

The same thing happens with plurals that are formed by a change of ending instead of using the letter s: The children's books, women's rights.

What happens though when the one doing the possessing is a plural ending with the letter s?  You might expect to do the same thing: My parents's house.

But of course we don't usuallydo that; it looks and sounds clumsy.  So we drop the final letter s  but leave the apostrophe after the first one: My parents' house, the voters' decision, two years' imprisonment.  We can use this method to say "for goodness' sake",  though here the apostrophe is often omitted altogther.

If the subject is singular but ends with the letter s we normally add es to the word instead of using an apostrophe at all, but in the case of proper names it's more usual to use an apostrophe, as in: Mrs Jones's house, Dickens's novels, though increasingly the final s is omitted here too.  There is some disagreement over this issue.

Where a name already has two s letters, it is considered rather unpronouncable to add yet another (try saying Moses's), so we get: Moses' journeys,  Jesus' teachings.  You will also see this done with ancient Greek names of more than one syllable: Socrates' death, Aristophanes' character.  It's just easier that way.

It would be correct, if a little clumsy, to use the ('s) in such phrases as: the boy in the corner's jeans, the man in the street's views, but it's probably better to rephrase something like that using of to sound less awkward: the view of the man in the street. After all, the corner doesn't have jeans. Well, not usually.  And the views of the street are not the sort under discussion.

With more than one person the ('s) is added to the second or last one:
John and Martha's wedding, my uncle and aunt's trip to Europe.

Although we use ('s) for such things as: going to the dentist's, I'll see you at Betty's, for large companies, household names,  it is usual to omit the apostrophe:  We shopped at Harrods, we went to Bloomingdales.

Plurals of Letters, etc:
We can add apostrophes to avoid confusion when making some plurals such as: Mind your P's and Q's, but where there is no confusion likely it isn't necessary: in the 1980s, the three Rs.

Its v It's. 

Now we come to the most vexed used of ('s); the one that gives most trouble. It's the word its.
It's, with an apostrophe, is always the contraction of the words it is or it has.  That is its only use.
Its, without an apostrophe, means: belonging to it. 

Now after all I've said about ('s), why in this case is it different? I'll explain.

We have these words called possessive pronouns: my, your, his, her, our, their, and the other one: it.  A pronoun is a word used instead of a name. I could say: "It is Sarah's" but instead of always using her name, I can say "It is hers." The word "her" is standing in for "Sarah" it is for, or pro, Sarah. Pro the noun, a pronoun. The possessive bit means it also tells you that something belongs to that person or thing. It's obvious really.

None of these possessive pronouns take an ('s). Let me repeat that. NONE of these take ('s).

So my becomes mine:  it is my car, becomes: the car is mine
Do the same with these:
your becomes yours, his stays as his (don't ask; it's one of those things), her becomes hers, our becomes ours, their becomes theirs,  and it - you've guessed it! It becomes its. No apostrophe. See? Easy.

Eg:  It's a sad thing when a dog loses its tail. It's even sadder when it loses its mind.

The more indefinite pronouns however, like someone, anybody, use ('s) as normal: it must be somebody's fault, it isn't anyone's fault.

Your v You're

This is another place where the apostrophe can sneak in uninvited.
Your means belonging to you: It is your right to be here.
You're is simply a contraction of You are.

The big no-noAnd the big - huge - enormous no-no is using ('s) to make a noun plural. Never, NEVER use ('s) except for a contraction, or for possession.

People selling produce may write about caulie's - it's a contraction, letters are missing -  but they should never, ever, say caulifower's, unless to say "the cauliflower's stalk" or something. The plural of cauliflower is cauliflowers. Just that.

For some glaring examples of apostrophes being misused, see:

http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/examples.htm


Oh, and the reason the butterfly is called a comma? It has two white marks on the undersides of its rear wings, shaped like commas.