How To Use Commas When Listing
You need commas between each item on the list with one important exception.
How to use commas when listing. Charlie has to buy flashlight batteries breath butter cookies breath ice cream breath and cake. This page explains when to use commas in lists has lots of examples and includes an interactive exercise. My estate goes to my husband son daughter in law and nephew. With two list items don t use a comma. While there s some degree of flexibility in how commas are used it s important to have a clear grasp of the rules.
Use commas to separate words and word groups in a simple series of three or more items. The three musketeers were athos porthos and aramis. Use commas to separate things in a list or series. First it is used in a list when three or more words phrases or even complete sentences are joined by the word and or or. There are some cases where you know you should use a comma such as when separating items in a list but there are other times when you might be unsure whether or not a comma is needed.
At the store i will buy apples oranges pears and bananas. Essentially a semicolon is like a comma with more meaning or a colon with more flexibility. Use commas when writing a list of at least three words phrases or clauses in a sentence. A semicolon is used to separate two ideas two independent clauses that are closely related. This comma is called the serial comma or the oxford comma.
As mentioned above when you are listing three or more items commas should separate each element of the list. With three list items use a comma between the list items and before the and or whatever conjunction if it s your local convention. When you read the list aloud the commas emerge as breaths. The commas between these items are signals. I need to go to the supermarket to buy eggs milk bread sugar and.
We might call this construction an x y and z list. In that case you would not place a comma before the and that joins the final two items. However the final comma the one that comes before the and is optional. Commas can be a particularly tricky punctuation mark. For example here is a list separated by commas.