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ACT English 1.5 Punctuation 431 Views


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ACT English: Punctuation Drill 1, Problem 5. What is the correct way to separate these clauses?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Rainy Days.

00:08

Although the weather turned rainy and cold, we decided to go to the park.

00:18

Well, look at what we have here. A dependent clause leaning on its friend the independent clause.

00:25

(Announcer voice) "Will dependent clause be able to survive on its own? Will independent

00:28

clause kick him out? Tune in next time, on the dependency project..."

00:33

Alright, well maybe it's not quite that dramatic.

00:36

But we know that a dependent clause, as its name suggests, depends on another clause to keep it afloat.

00:42

"Although the weather turned rainy and cold," can't act as a sentence by itself,

00:47

so it's a dependent clause.

00:48

Let's try going through the answers... Will D work?

00:51

Well, the comma between rainy and cold is problematic. If you're just saying two items,

00:55

you don't need a comma in between them. What about C? There's no comma at

00:59

all. You can't just plop down a dependent clause and an independent clause next to each other.

01:04

They need something to stick themselves together. Commas are the superglue of clauses.

01:09

Let's look at the comma use in B.

01:12

A comma is a little pause when you read it. So this sentence, would be "Although the

01:17

weather turned, rainy and cold we decided to go to the park."

01:22

First of all it just sounds wrong. But there's also not a comma between the clauses, and

01:26

an extra one between turned and rainy that doesn't serve any purpose.

01:30

Now we're just left with A, and it looks pretty darn good.

01:33

No more random, extraneous commas, and the two clauses are separated by one.

01:39

Mission accomplished.

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