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commas are awesome. they're like the therapists of punctuation. he's

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reminding us to slow down, and take a breath, every once in, a while. but just [couches converse]

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because we love them does that mean we should be throwing a million of them

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into our writing absolutely not? yes commas are great but there are some

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places where they're helpful in some places where they're just not. one place [man holds up hands]

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for commas? well lists with three or more items. every item in the list gets

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separated with a comma. can't have them getting too cozy on the job there right?

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so if you have a sentence like John picked up butter eggs and a big bucket

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of grease, well you'll definitely want a comma right after butter to separate the

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first two items. and another one right after eggs to separate the last two. [sentences on screen]

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whether John's wife will definitely want that big bucket of grease well that's

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another story. if your list is only two items long though you shouldn't use any

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commas. so if our sentence had been John picked up butter and a big bucket of

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grease well it should remain a completely comma free. it'd be nice if

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John's home would remain completely free of buckets of grease, but hey you can't [man covers counters with buckets]

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have everything. another good place for comma is between two independent clauses

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joined by a conjunction. remember independent clauses can stand

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by themselves expressing a complete thought like it was rainy out, or I

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brought an umbrella. so if we wanted to join these two independent clauses with

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a conjunction like so, we'd need to slip a comma between them right after out. if [sentences on screen]

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it's really rainy you might also want to slip on a pair of rubber boots, and no

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that's not a matter of good grammar just dry socks. on the other hand if we have

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two independent clauses that aren't joined by a conjunction we don't need

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any commas. so if we tried to join the independent clauses I was so tired and I

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forgot my boots. throwing a comma between them would be a mistake which we call a

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comma splice. and those are even worse than wet socks well you know that depends how you feel about [frowning kid in the rain]

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bad grammar. we could also use commas to separate a non-restrictive element from

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the rest of the sentence. well a non-restrictive element is

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something we can cut right out of a sentence without changing its meaning.

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for example in a sentence like the dog which I got from the pound can do five

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tricks. which I got from the pound is a non-restrictive element because the [sentences on screen]

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sentence would still be complete as the dog can do five tricks so we'd need to

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separate the non-restrictive element from the rest of the sentence with a

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couple of commas. of course if one of the dogs tricks is

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separating no constrictive elements while he might have already done it for [dog wags tail]

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you. good boy. however comma shouldn't always be used

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for separating especially if you've got a dependent clause or a restrictive

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element on your hands. in a sentence like the dog caught a frisbee while I was

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tying my shoelaces, well, while I was tying my shoelaces is a dependent clause

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so the sentence should remain comma free. similarly in a sentence like the

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shoelace I was tying turned to dust. I was tying is important to

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understanding the sentence. so it's a restrictive element which means no

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commas. although we might think about getting new shoelaces. pretty tough to [man ties shoes]

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tie dust into a nice bow.

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