About this video
David and Paige show how a list without commas can be confusing, like 'squid pickles and chocolate'. They fix it by putting commas between the items, and show that commas can separate verb phrases in a list too, not just nouns.
You'll be able to
- use commas to separate nouns in a list.
- use commas to separate verb phrases in a list.
- explain how missing commas can change the meaning of a list.
Key words
- list
- A series of three or more things or actions in a sentence.
- noun
- A word for a person, place or thing, like squid or pickles.
- verb phrase
- A group of words built around an action, like 'read a chapter of my book'.
Transcript
- [Voiceover] Hey Paige! - [Voiceover] What's up David?
- [Voiceover] Is this right? Okay, so I'm about to go to the grocery store, and it looks like it says, "I need to get squid pickles and chocolate at the grocery store."
- [Voiceover] Yeah. - [Voiceover] Did you want squid pickles?
- [Voiceover] No, I wanted squid and pickles.
- [Voiceover] I must have written it down wrong, okay. So I think what we need to do in order to fix this list and avoid confusion like this in the future is using commas to punctuate a list. 'Cause right now this just looks like squid pickles, which, I mean probably delicious, pickled squid.
- [Voiceover] Yeah. - [Voiceover] Probably delicious.
- [Voiceover] Sure. - [Voiceover] But not what we were looking to get today.
- [Voiceover] Right. - [Voiceover] If we don't want to get pickled squid today, then we have to put commas in between the elements of the list.
- [Voiceover] Right. - [Voiceover] Right, because this is what commas do. The separate elements of every everything. So let's put in those dividers. I need to get squid, comma, pickles, comma, and chocolate at the grocery store.
- [Voiceover] Exactly. - [Voiceover] Okay, so we can punctuate a list by separating out nouns, and I see from the second sentence here, Paige could you give me a read for that?
- [Voiceover] I'm going to go for a run, read a chapter of my book and go see the new Colonel Justice movie.
- [Voiceover] Oh I hear that's good. So right now it says that, but it could also just be "I'm going to go for a run read a chapter of my book, and go see..." you know there's like no--
- [Voiceover] It's a little confusing. - [Voiceover] It's a little confusing, right? There could be such a thing as a run read.
- [Voiceover] There probably is. - [Voiceover] You know, like where you go for a jog while holding a book.
- [Voiceover] Sounds difficult. - [Voiceover] And so we can also use commas in lists to separate not just nouns like in this first one, but also verb phrases. So I'm going for a run, comma, read a chapter of my book, comma, and go see the new Colonel Justice movie.
- [Voiceover] Perfect. - [Voiceover] Cool. So that's how you punctuate a list with commas.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, you got it. - [Voiceover] You can learn anything. David out.
- [Voiceover] Paige out.
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