Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Comma Coma #5: A Subject Stands by Her Verb and Will Not Let a Comma Between Them

Subjects need their verbs to create a sentence.  A good subject and verb will not allow a comma between them.
Once upon a time, students sat in classrooms parsing sentences. They were told to put one line under the entire subject and two lines under the verb.  When you are clear on which words are the subject and which words are the verb, you might be more circumspect about tossing in your commas.


Identify the subjects and verbs in these sentences and delete or add punctuation.  Here are a bunch of sentences from my recently marked essays.


  1. Seeing my kids grow and blossom like spring flowers, fills me with strength.
  2. Where I want wrong, was when I took his comments to heart and did not see the real emotion behind them.
  3. One of the biggest problems, was the fact that we used to earn bonuses for drafting patents.
  4. One of the things that I observed about you, is that you were interested in knowing me.
  5. One thing I will never forget, is the great advice you gave me.


Answer:
Delete all the commas (if you want to write better, dammit).

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