ShmoopTube

00:03

Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by several breeds of spiders.

00:08

You might want to check for egg sacks.

00:34

How would you correct this underlined segment from the passage, if at all?

00:37

Many spiders particularly orb funnel sheet and cob-weaving spiders?

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And here are the potential answers...

00:49

One of the many talents of the comma is separating items on a list.

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Whenever we have a sentence that lists three or more items, it’s necessary to use commas

00:58

to separate those items. Otherwise, we end up with a big pile of indecipherable mush.

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Here’s an example:

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“Jose likes bacon, barbecue sauce, sardines, and ice cream on his pizza.”

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(Don’t hate; Jose is a man of refined, yet idiosyncratic tastes.)

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Did you notice how we placed a comma after each item on the list?

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There were three or more, so it had to be done.

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If we hadn’t, Jose’s various toppings would all mush together in the sentence.

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And if these toppings mushed together, this pizza might get too experimental even for Jose.

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We should point out that there is some debate about the comma that comes directly before “and.”

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This comma is called the Oxford or serial comma, and some say it isn’t necessary since

01:41

the list is already established by the time we get to it.

01:45

However, grammarians are still bickering about this issue.

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Since there’s no consensus, whichever way we feel like doing it is fine.

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All right, let’s get back to the sentence at hand, which lists four different kinds

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of spiders: orb, funnel, sheet, and cob-weaving.

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Options (A), (B), and (C) make no attempt to separate the items on the list with commas.

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Not only is this a bad idea because it’s grammatically incorrect, it’s also gross.

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Who wants to think about that many kinds of spiders crawling all over each other?

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The correct answer is (D), which is the only option that correctly places a comma after

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each item on the list.

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Commas now safely separate these spider breeds.

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This is great for our peace of mind and also great for the spiders; being crowded together

02:31

was probably no fun for them either.

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