Maryland Excels in Comma Use

Maryland public education is highly ranked, according to both Education Week and the College Board. With this in mind, I would expect Maryland’s education leaders to be expert communicators.

When leaders are good communicators, they help their organizations achieve high goals. (I argue that people who are not good communicators can not be good leaders.) Thus, a high achieving education system is a sign of education leaders who are expert communicators.

People who are expert communicators generally understand comma use because correct comma use leads to excellent communication. Let’s look at a sample from the Maryland Department of Education website for evidence.

The curriculum Framework, the foundation of the new curriculum, will be presented to the State Board in June 2011, and the completed curriculum will be implemented in Maryland schools in the 2013-2014 school year. (http://mdk12.org/instruction/commoncore/index.html)

First Comma Use: Non-restrictive Appositive

The phrase the foundation of the new curriculum is in apposition to curriculum Framework. This means that the phrase renames or restates curriculum Framework. They mean the same thing. Curriculum Framework equals, and is a perfect match for, the foundation of the new curriculum.

In technical terms, the phrase is a non-restrictive appositive. One way to check this is to see whether the terms can be used independently without changing the meaning of the sentence. Using this example, we can write either

The curriculum Framework will be presented to the State Board in June 2011

or

The foundation of the new curriculum will be presented to the State Board in June 2011

without changing the meaning of the sentence. Because both sentences are grammatically correct and have the same meaning, we know that the foundation of the new curriculum is a non-restrictive appositive for the curriculum Framework.

According to Zen Comma Rule J, a non-restrictive appositive is separated from the rest of the sentence with commas. As you can see from the sample, the non-restrictive appositive is separated from the rest of the sentence, with commas both before and after the phrase.

Second Comma Use: Compound Sentences

Now that we have examined the first two commas, let’s look at the third. To understand why the third comma is correct, we need to first examine the entire sentence structure.

This sample has two complete sentences joined by and to make one long sentence. We can call each sentence an independent clause. An independent clause has a subject and predicate and can serve as a complete sentence by itself.

In the sample, the first independent clause is

The curriculum Framework, the foundation of the new curriculum, will be presented to the State Board in June 2011.

If we put a period at the end, as I did here, we have a complete sentence.

The second independent clause is

The completed curriculum will be implemented in Maryland schools in the 2013-2014 school year.

If we capitalize the first word, as I did here, we have another complete sentence.

Thus, this sample has two independent clauses, or complete sentences, joined by the coordinating conjunction and.

Following Zen Comma Rule D, the sample has a comma before the coordinating conjunction that joins two independent clauses. In simpler terms, when you join two complete sentences with a conjunction, put a comma before the conjunction.

Correct Comma Use!

I expect a high-quality education system (or any organization) to have high-achieving leaders, and I expect high-achieving leaders to be expert communicators, and I expect expert communicators to know how to use commas. Based on this sample, I declare the education leaders at the Maryland State Department of Education to be Zen Comma Masters.

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Need help with commas? Get Zen Comma, an instructive reference guide on the 17 major uses and misuses of commas, available in PDF and Kindle formats. Read more about Zen Comma.

Your Writing Companion: Our e-book with samples from each of our writing guides.
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Solving Confusion Caused by Commas

(A Twitter friend pointed out that a serial comma can cause confusion. This post is in response. In this post, I show that the serial comma doesn’t cause the confusion but that the overall sentence structure causes the confusion. By fixing the sentence structure, I solve the problem.)

Commas are necessary for helping the reader understand your writing. They separate elements within sentences that each have a unique meaning. With commas in correct places, the reader, then, can identify each part of a sentence that has s separate meaning and can make sense of the whole sentence.

But correct commas use can also lead to confusion in one particular instance. Consider this sentence:

Nancy gave the medicine to Tom, her brother, and her daughter.

The commas are correct in this sample, but they create a problem. Did Nancy give the medicine to (a) Tom, and (b) her brother, and (c) her daughter, meaning did she give the medicine to 3 people? Or did she give the medicine to only 2 people: Tom (assuming that Tom is her brother) and her daughter?

The problem is that we don’t know whether Tom is her brother or whether Tom and her brother are two different people.

If I had written “Nancy gave the medicine to Tom, her brother,” then the sentence would clearly indicate that Tom and her brother are the same person. Here, her brother is an appositive for Tom, indicating that her brother is simply another way of saying Tom. In the sample, however, we have a series of three with and following her brother, so the reader can’t be sure that her brother is Tom. In short, the sample is confusing.

But we can solve this confusion by fixing the sentence structure.

Commas Between Adjectives

You have two adjectives together. Do you or don’t you put a comma between them? If they are coordinate adjectives, you do. This follows Zen Comma Rule P.

Zen Comma Rule P: Put a Comma between Coordinate Adjectives.

Definition of Coordinate Adjectives. Adjectives are coordinate if they meet two criteria: (1) You can place and between the two words, and the sentence means the same thing, and (2) You can reverse their order, and the sentence means the same thing.

Sample 1: We had a hot, dry summer.

Sample 1 has the adjectives hot and dry, both used to describe summer. If we add and between them and write We had a hot and dry summer, the sentence makes sense. It also makes sense if we reverse their order and write We had a dry, hot summer. The pair of adjectives meets both criteria, so we know they are coordinate and put a comma between them.

To native English speakers, the two revised sentences will sound like natural speech, and the two criteria are likely sufficient to identify coordinate adjectives. For a more technical explanation, we can examine the Royal Order of Adjectives.

An editor who loves commas

Do you need a comma with Who? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, depending on what who is doing in the sentence. These three sample sentences demonstrate when to use commas, or not to use commas, with who.

1. I am an editor, who is a person with the task of improving clarity in writing.
2. I am an editor who loves commas.
3. As an editor who loves commas, I put in all the required commas to reduce potential reader confusion.

Comma with WHO

Sentence 1, with a comma before who, has one message: I am an editor. And what is an editor? Editor is defined as a person with the task of improving clarity in writing. In this sentence, the clause beginning with who provides descriptive information about editors.

As a non-restrictive clause, this expression doesn’t tell which editor is being described, i.e., it doesn’t restrict the reader’s attention from a group of things to a single thing. Rather, it is providing a definition.

The comma here follows Zen Comma rule U: Use commas to separate non-restrictive clauses beginning with who.

No comma with WHO

You don’t need a comma with who if the word is starting a “restrictive clause.” A restrictive clause helps to indicate one thing from among similar things, i.e., which thing you are writing about.

Sentence 2, with no comma before who, describes a group of people called editors. Which one am I? How am I different from other editors? What type of editor am I? I am an editor who loves commas.

Who loves commas is required information to identify me from the rest of the editors. As a restrictive clause, who loves commas restricts the reader’s attention from all editors to one particular editor: me, in this case.

This is the same situation as in sentence 3. Again, who loves commas is required information to tell the reader which editor is being discussed.

With no commas before who, sentences 2 and 3 follow Zen Comma rule V: Don’t use commas to separate restrictive clauses beginning with who.

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Need help with commas? Get Zen Comma, an instructive reference guide on the 17 major uses and misuses of commas, available in PDF and Kindle formats. Read more about Zen Comma.

Your Writing Companion: Our e-book with samples from each of our writing guides.
Get the free e-book (PDF, 45 pages) or purchase the Kindle version ($0.99).