COMM 1106: Grammar Exercise (Week Four The Five Comma Rules 1. Use commas to separate three or more items in a series. The items may be expressed as words, shrases, or causes. 2. Put a comma between independent clauses when they are joined by for, and, nor, but, or, yet, or 30 3. Put a comma after an introductory word, phrase, or dependent clause that comes BEFORE an independent clause. 4. Use commas to set off any word, phrase, or dependent clause that is NOT ESSENTIAL to the main idea of the sentence. 5. Use commas to separate coordinate adjectives but not cumulative adjectives. Activity The following paragraph contains 15 comma errors that are often found in student writing. Your task is to remove all unnecessary commas and insert commas where they belong, according to the five comma rules. (Be careful; some of the commas in this paragraph are correctly placed.) Since Confederation Quebec has produced many remarkable federal leaders including two of our most famous prime ministers Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Pierre Trudeau. According to a 19"-century rumour la belle province then know as Lower Canada may also have produced an American president. Chester Arthur was running, for president, in 1881 when the Democrats paid a lawyer Arthur Hinman to investigate his past. Hinman alleged that Arthur was born in Dunham, Quebec, and moved to Fairfield, Vermont his official birthplace as an infant. Hinman's theories have since been discredited but they created a controversy during Arthur's president, which lasted from 1881 to 1885. In 1884, Hinman created a temporary scandal when he printed his claims in a pamphlet entitled How a British Subject, Became President of the United States