![]() ![]() You would not put a comma between little and old in "the little old lady." (The cold, dark cave was home to many creatures.) - If you can place an "and" between them, and it still makes sense, then they are coordinate adjectives and should have a comma between them. are used between coordinate adjectives, which are adjectives with "equal status" in describing their noun - neither is subordinate to the other. (My aunt, who has the long blonde hair, is standing next to my uncle.) - If you can take this phrase out without interrupting the flow of the sentence, it is nonessential. set apart nonessential phrases or words. (While he was eating lunch, he spilled his coffee.) set apart introductory phrases or words. (My class is long, and it is also boring.) join independent clauses if there is a conjunction to link them. (On my trip I visited Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.) separate elements in a series if there are not already commas within the elements. (I ordered vanilla, moosetracks, and strawberry ice cream from the shop their most famous ice cream, however, is chocolate.) are used in between independent clauses if they are really long or if they are already punctuated with commas. are used between independent clauses that are connected with a transitional phrase like "as a result." (I did not stay up late to study for my exam as a result, I failed the class.) connect related independent clauses - which are full sentences - if there is no conjunction like "and" joining them. (On my trip I visited Tallahassee, Florida Atlanta, Georgia and Montgomery, Alabama.) separate elements in a series if the elements already contain commas. You can have nonessential clauses as well, and just plain words too, which you also have to put commas around. So a phrase is a group of words that work together to achieve a greater meaning, a clause is a group of words with a subject and a verb, and a nonessential phrase is a phrase is separated from the rest of the sentence by commas because without it, the sentence is still specific and has a meaning that makes sense. Take the sentence: "The person cutting Usnavi's hair was even hairier than he was." Here, we don't put commas around "cutting Usnavi's hair" because it's essential information to understanding who the man is. For the most part, you can tell if a phrase is nonessential or not just from its meaning and how it relates to the meaning of the sentence. In the sentence: "Usnavi, a very hairy man, was fearsome to behold", knowing that Usnavi is hairy isn't essential to getting at the main meaning of the sentence, which is that he's fearsome. The main way we signify that a phrase is nonessential is with the commas surrounding it. Now, nonessential phrases are phrases that can be removed from the sentence, like you said. The way I've learned it is that a phrase is just a group of words acting together to express one idea, like in "around the world" or "slurping greedily". A clause, even a dependent one, will always have a subject and a verb, while a phrase will never have both a subject and a verb in it. ![]() This is the key difference between them and phrases. Take "Roman numerals" and "are used" in the first clause, and "it" and "is" in the second clause. ![]() It's made up of an independent clause ("Roman numerals are still used in a few contexts") and a dependent clause ("because it is sometimes useful to have distinct numerals for distinct purposes").Ĭlauses are bits of words with a subject and a verb in them. What you have between the commas in that sentence, "Roman numerals are still used in a few contexts because it is sometimes useful to have distinct numerals for distinct purposes" functions as an entire sentence by itself.
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