Comma Rules

Commas are an important part of your writing. How would you punctuate this sentence?

“Let’s eat grandma!”

If you said add a comma between eat and grandma, wonderful! Dinner’s on the table and you’re ready to eat. If you forgot a comma however, you change the whole meaning of the sentence into a very troubling one…

Here’s a short list of comma rules:

Use a comma in between the city and state when writing an address.
Use a comma in between the day and year when writing the full date.
Use a comma after the salutation of a letter.
Commas should be used when writing a list, between each part of the list except for the last two items.
When you have a dependent clause at the beginning of a sentence, you should set it off with a comma.
When you are using an introductory word or transition at the beginning of a sentence.
When you connect two independent clauses.
When you are adding extra information to a sentence that is not directly important to the sentence’s meaning, you can set it off with a comma.
Use a comma before you write what somebody said in quotation marks.
When signing a letter, use a comma in between the close of the letter and your name.

We have a new story that covers all these comma rules. Listen to Leroy narrate a letter to his parents all about Camp Okee-Dokee, where is counselor is “a real grammar nerd,” and rewards him when he correctly uses commas in his letter.

“So I’ve been using commas every time I write lists. During morning activities I built a scale model of the Millennium Falcon, learned Hebrew and took an acting class with Leonardo DiCaprio.”

Wow, I wish my camp days had been that interesting!

Did you like the Comma Camp story? Refresh the rest of your grammar with fifteen more grammar songs.