🏁 The simplest way to use commas is in a list.
If you like 3 football teams, for example Sheffield United, Leeds and Barnsley, you can write a sentence like this:
I like Sheffield United, Leeds and Barnsley.
You’ll see that you only use one comma between the first two teams on the list. You don’t really need a comma there before the ‘and.’ Commas make sentences much easier to read.
📲 💻You can use this link to a Google Form so you can test you’ve got it.
🔆 If you’re sorted now, you’re ready to go to Skill 12.
🛠 Need more practise? Try these exercises.
🎯 📝 Can you put the commas in these lists below?
1. I like to eat chocolate ice-cream and doughnuts.
2. I can swim run play football and climb.
3. I hate Eastenders Coronation Street Emmerdale and Hollyoaks!
4. I’m on Facebook Snapchat YouTube Instagram and Pinterest.
You can also look at this BBC Bitesize guide (if you have Flash player):
https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/articles/zc773k7
✅ Your answers should look like this:
1. I like to eat chocolate, ice-cream and doughnuts.
2. I can swim, run, play football and climb.
3. I hate Eastenders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks!
4. I’m on Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest.
🚦 Time for more?
You can also use commas after a colon (the sign that looks like this ‘:’), which can be used to introduce a list (more on this in the next section on commas and how to use them later on). For example, we could say:
John had three things on his mind at all times: football, drinking, and eating!
🎓 In the sentence above, there is a comma before the and. The name for a comma used in this position is a serial or Oxford comma.