Commas & Company

Introduction

These questions require you to understand how commas interact with other commas and certain types of phrases in a sentence. They can be tricky to solve, but they are easy to identify:

1. cars, but Bob,
2. cars but Bob,
3. cars, but Bob
4. cars but Bob

What is the only thing that changes between the answer choices?

These questions are easily identifiable because the answer choices will be identical except for the comma placement.

There are 2 types of comma questions:

1. Interruptive syntax questions require you to identify the conjugated verbs and their respective subjects.
2. Restrictive clause questions require you to understand which ideas are tightly connected.

We'll cover both of these concepts, as well as some more miscellaneous rules and exceptions.

Avanti.

Type 1: Interruptive Syntax

Parenthetical phrases

Before we get to the main idea, we need to cover parenthetical phrases.

Commas have many purposes. One of these is to mark the start and end of a parenthetical phrase, phrases which can be removed from the sentence without altering its core structure. We call these phrases parenthetical phrases because you can think of them as “being between brackets”. In this sentence, for example,

Running for the bus, I slipped.

The phrase running for the bus is a parenthetical phrase because it can be removed without altering the main structure of the text:

Running for the bus, I slipped.

I slipped is still a complete sentence without the parenthetical phrase running for the bus.

Placement

Parenthetical phrases can occur at the start of a sentence,

Running for the bus, I slipped.

in the middle of a sentence,

Bob, my best friend, is from France.

or at the end of a sentence,

This is Bob, my best friend.

Multiple parentheticals

We can also have multiple parenthetical phrases in a single sentence, such as this one:

Running for the bus, Bob, my best friend, slipped, eliciting gasps from his fellow pedestrians.

Can you spot all the parenthetical phrases?

Here’s the sentence again, this time with the parenthetical phrases crossed out:

✅ Running for the bus, Bob, my best friend, slipped, causing everyone at the bus stop to gasp.

Notice we cannot remove Bob or slipped The parenthetical phrases, meanwhile, can be removed. And while we do lose details, the basic meaning of the sentence—the fact that Bob slipped—hasn’t changed.

When we remove parentheticals, therefore, we must be careful not to remove the subject or the verb from the sentence. In other words, not all phrases between commas are parenthetical phrases. Remember this. It is important.

Interruptive Syntax

Interruptive syntax with commas

Interruptive syntax refers to a type of sentence where the subject and verb are separated by a parenthetical phrase. The term interruptive refers to the fact that the flow of the sentence is “interrupted” by the insertion of parenthetical information, like this:

✅ Bob, my best friend, is from France.

In this sentence, Bob is the subject and is is the verb, and the two are separated by the parenthetical phrase my best friend.

This type of sentence structure is very commonly tested on the SAT. Consider this simplified example:

Paris, one of the most expensive cities in the _______ is not affordable for most people.

1. world,
2. world
3. world—
4. world;

If you remember the rules of sentence boundaries, you’ll quickly see that (c) and (d) are incorrect because both dashes and semicolons require a full sentence on their left hand side.

1. world,
2. world
3. world—
4. world;

Now let’s consider answer choice (b). If we choose to not place a comma here, then we end up with a parenthetical phrase that hasn’t been properly closed:

Paris, one of the most expensive cities in the world is not affordable for most people.

This is a bad thing because the subject and the verb have been split with a single comma, which is pretty similar to writing this:

Paris (one of the most expensive cities in the world is not affordable for most people.

Would you ever write a sentence with just one opening bracket and no closing bracket? Of course not. We all know that we have to close the bracket at some point. Well the same is true of parenthetical phrases. If we have an “opening” comma we must have a corresponding closing comma. Answer choice (a) offers just this:

Paris, one of the most expensive cities in the world, is not affordable for most people.

which is akin to writing

Paris (one of the most expensive cities in the world ) is not affordable for most people.

and all is well in the world.

warning

⚠️ When we remove parentheticals we must be careful not to remove the subject or the verb from the sentence. In other words, not all phrases between commas are parenthetical phrases.

Now let’s consider this problem:

Organizations such as the International Labor Organization in ___________ regularly host conferences on domestic workers’ rights.

1. Switzerland:
2. Switzerland,
3. Switzerland—
4. Switzerland

Solution

Again, let’s delete (a) and (c) because colons and dashes each require an independent clause on their left hand side.

Now let’s consider the commas. If we read the sentence aloud, it sounds like a comma kinda works. After reading that clunky phrase all the way up to the word Switzerland, surely we’re entitled to a short break to catch our breath, right? Wrong. If we place a comma after Switzerland we’ve broken the rule that opening brackets must have a corresponding closing bracket (and vice versa). Can you see now why (b) doesn’t work?

Organizations such as the International Labor Organization in Geneva Switzerland, regularly host conferences on domestic workers’ rights.

If we were to place a comma after Switzerland, then we would need to place an “opening” comma before such as, like so:

Organizations, such as the International Labor Organization in Geneva Switzerland, regularly host conferences on domestic workers’ rights.

But this isn’t an option, so the answer must be (d), removing commas altogether:

Organizations such as the International Labor Organization in Geneva Switzerland regularly host conferences on domestic workers’ rights.

But hold on! When am I supposed to breathe here? Well you can breathe whenever you want to. As a reader, it’s up to you when you choose to pause and when you choose to power on. Of course commas and pauses are related, but that relationship isn’t set in stone. In fact, on the SAT you should tread very carefully on comma questions and be skeptical of your ear. In these sorts of questions the College Board is specifically looking to trap students who rely on their ear. Don’t let them get away with it!

Interruptive syntax with dashes

So far we’ve seen that we can mark the start and end of a sentence with commas, like this one:

Cars, although practical, are a major source of pollution world wide.

And we’ve seen that we could also use brackets, as in this one:

Cars (although practical) are a major source of pollution world wide.

But that’s not all. There is a third way: dashes.

Cars—*although practical—*are a major source of pollution world wide.

All three of these options are perfectly valid. And while this may seem more complicated or “advanced”, dashes are actually really easy to apply with paretheticals.

For one, dashes are easy to spot. If a given sentence has two dashes in it, it’s almost impossible not to see them.

It’s also dead simple to see which dash is the “opening” one and which one is the “closing” one. Commas, in contrast, are much more complicated because a sentence could have several commas in it, and not every pair of commas will actually form a parenthetical phrase. With dashes, however, a sentence should never have more than two dashes, so if you seen two dashes, they must go together to form a parenthetical phrase.

tip

If a sentence as two dashes in it, then those two dashes must go together. So placing a second dash in a sentence implies that there is a parenthetical phrase between the dashes.

The elephant in a room

Students who’ve been paying attention and learned the rules of sentence boundaries—particularly the rules of dash usage—may have noticed something awkward. Aren’t we required to have a full sentence on the left hand side of a dash? If so, would that make this sentence,

❓*Cars—*although practical—are a major source of pollution world wide.

a mistake? If you spotted this inconsistency, well done. But no, this is not a mistake. There are in fact two different uses of the dash. The first is to seperate clauses and the second is to mark off parenthetical phrases. Simply put:

info

There are two uses of the dash:

• A problem with 1 dash requires you to apply the rules of sentence boundaries.
• A problem with 2 dashes requires you to apply the rules of parenthetical phrases.

Exercises

Question 1

Marsupials (mammals that carry their young in a pouch) are a curiosity among biologists because they lack a corpus callosum, the collection of nerve fibers connecting the two hemispheres of the brain. In most other mammals, the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body, the right hemisphere controls the left, and the corpus callosum allows communication between the hemispheres. Scientists have long believing that this structure enables complex tasks by sequestering skilled movement to a single hemisphere without sacrificing coordination between both sides of the body; this sequestration would explain handedness, the tendency to consistently prefer one hand over the other, in humans. However, a recent finding of handedness in marsupials suggests that a __________ other than the presence of a corpus callosum correlates with handedness: bipedalism.

1. trait
2. trait,
3. trait;
4. trait:

Solution

(D)

Question 2

The career of Valerie Lincoln, an employee at the aerospace company United Technologies Corporation _____ is a significant success story for her company’s tuition‑reimbursement program.

1. (UTC)
2. (UTC)—
3. (UTC):
4. (UTC),

Solution

(D)

Question 3

The second (“Silver”) age of comics was marked by characters that, though somewhat simplistic by today’s standards, were more “realistic” than their Golden Age counterparts. In addition to super villains, the new, soon-to-be-iconic characters of the __________ Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the Hulk among them—had to cope with mundane, real-life problems, including paying the rent, dealing with family squabbles, and facing anger, loneliness, and ostracism.

1. age:
2. age;
3. age,
4. age—

Solution

(D)

Tight connections

Prepositonal phrases

Prepositions are little words that show the relation between two nouns. That probably didn’t help much, but I’m sure you’re already familiar with these words and can probably identify them pretty easily already. Here’s a bunch of examples of prepositions:

on, in, for, of, at, with, after, with, without, until

These words are used to show how two ideas, objects, concepts or whatever are related in space or time.

When a preposition is used to connect two ideas or objects, we get a prepositional phrase. Here are some more examples:

the cup on the table ⇒ shows the relationship between the cup and the table.

The King of England ⇒ shows the relationship between The King and England.

the day after tomorrow ⇒ shows the relationship between the day and tomorrow.

The relationship between the ideas is often spatial (the cup is on the table) but it can also be more abstract (the King of England) or even temporal (the day after tomorrow).

But regardless of the ideas being joined, prepositions join together tightly connected ideas and as such we don’t want to break up this tight connection with commas.

❌ the King, of England

❌ the cup, on the table

❌ the day after, tomorrow

Just as for the other comma rules, this rule can lead to some pretty awkward sounding sentences, and The College Board takes full advantage of this in its endeavors to ruin your life. This sentence, for instance,

✅ The car in the parking spot across the street from the house with the broken windows and the damaged roof with the cracked tiles and gaping holes is blue.

is correct. If you pick apart the sentence, you’ll see that every idea is tightly connected to the next one with a prepositional phrase:

✅ The car in the parking spot across the street from the house with the broken windows and the damaged roof with its cracked tiles and gaping holes is blue.

he car in the parking spot ⇒ no comma

the parking spot across the street ⇒ no comma

across the street from the house ⇒ no comma

the house with the broken windows and damaged roof ⇒ no comma

the damaged roof with its cracked tiles and gaping holes ⇒ no comma

So no commas.

Try Some

Question 1

Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall group, which controlled New York _________ stole more than $30 million, the equivalent of more than $365 million today.

1. City in the 1860s—
2. City in the 1860s,
3. City, in the 1860s,
4. City in the 1860s

Solution

(B)

Question 2

Most scientists looking for the causes of the Great Melt of 2012 have focused exclusively on rising temperatures. The summer of 2012 was the warmest in 170 years, records show. But Jason _________ believes that another factor added to the early thaw: the “dark snow” problem.

1. Box, an associate professor of geology at Ohio State
2. Box an associate professor of geology at Ohio State,
3. Box, an associate professor of geology at Ohio State,
4. Box, an associate professor of geology, at Ohio State,

Solution

(C)

Two item lists

If you have two items connected with the word and, you should not put a comma between them. For example,

❌I like bread, and honey.

✅I like bread and honey.

Add a third item, however, and things change.

✅ I like bread, milk and honey.

With an Oxford comma works as well.

✅ I like bread, milk, and honey.

This can produce some awkward sentences where the and groups together a set of ideas, and the flow of the sentence is hard to get your head around.

Bob and Alex, Steve and Stacy, and Sandra and Jean were over for dinner last night.

The key is to figure what the groups are. Any list of two items should not have a comma before the and.

This is also true for the word or. For example,

✅ Bob or Sally will do the dishes.

❌ Bob, or Sally, will do the dishes.

✅ Alex, Bob or Sally will do the dishes.

✅ Alex, Bob, or Sally will do the dishes.

Titles

Job titles are frequently tested on the SAT because they allow the College Board to create awkward sentences that are nevertheless correct. Consider this question:

Professor of _______ is hungry.

1. sociology and criminology, Penelope Smith,
2. sociology and criminology Penelope Smith
3. sociology, and criminology, Penelope Smith
4. sociology, and criminology Penelope Smith,

Referring to what we covered in the section on interruptive parenthetical phrases, we should be comfortable deleting answer choice (a) because the subject and the verb have been separated by a single comma—no good.

But what about the others? Try asking yourself, What is the person's full title?

Professor of sociology and criminology

You can now think of this phrase as being tightly connected, so you shouldn't split it up with any commas. So the correct answer is simply (b) because there are no commas splitting up the person’s title.

Again, this rule can lead to some awkward sentences. Here are some examples of sentences that feel like they could use a comma somewhere but are actually correct:

✅ Three time Oscar nominee John Malkovich is a great actor.

✅ Free speech advocate Loretta Maze is no pushover.

✅ Father of five and career custodian Thurgood Samson won the lottery yesterday.

All of these are correct, even though the ear really wants to place commas where you might choose to pause.

Try Some

Question 1

Cats are so cherished by The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg that officials recently decreed original paintings to be made of six of them. In each, a cat is depicted upright in a humanlike pose and clothed in imperial-era Russian attire. The person chosen for this ____________ painted the cats in the style traditionally used by portrait artists, in so doing presenting the cats as noble individuals worthy of respect.

1. task, digital artist, Eldar Zakirov
2. task, digital artist, Eldar Zakirov,
3. task digital artist Eldar Zakirov,
4. task, digital artist Eldar Zakirov,

Solution

(D)

No comma next to that

The Exception

Just about every comma “rule” can be broken with a single exception. All you have to do, for example, to correctly place a comma next to a preposition is to insert a parenthetical phrase just before or after the preposition in question. Here, for example,

✅ The woman had been living on just a dollar a day for years.

we have a correct sentence with the preposition on connecting the word living to the phrase a dollar. As it stands we wouldn’t place a comma beside the preposition on because we’d be breaking the preposition rule explained above. However, we can, correctly, add a parenthetical phrase to our sentence, like so:

✅ The woman had been living, believe it or not, on just a dollar a day for years.

By adding in a parenthetical phrase, we seem to have broken our preposition rule! But all is well, actually, because our parenthetical phrase is correctly marked off with both an opening comma and a closing comma. We could even choose to use brackets or dashes to insert our parenthetical phrase, and the sentence would still be correct:

✅ The woman had been living*—believe it or not—** on just a dollar a day for years.* ✅ The woman had been living (believe it or not) on just a dollar a day for years.

warning

⚠️ Never blindly eliminate an answer choice with a comma beside a prepostion. There are many questions—especially the more difficult ones—where the right answer includes a preposition with a parenthetical phrase beside it.

Try Some

Question 1 (CBP-2.2.33)

Wilmers and Estes caution that increasing the sea otter population will not automatically solve the problem of higher levels of carbon dioxide in the air. But they suggest that the presence of otters provides a good model of how carbon can be sequestered, ____________ the atmosphere through the management of animal populations.

1. or removed; from
2. or removed from,
3. or, removed from,
4. or removed, from

Solution

(D)