Writing Skills: When to use commas with AND, BUT, OR, FOR, SO, YET...

Hey, guys. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on conjunctions

in writing. In this lesson, we are going to focus on the most common coordinating conjunctions

in English, "and," "so," "but," and "or," and we're going to focus on improving your writing.

Okay? So I know that you guys understand what "and" means, right? "And," in addition. "So,"

as a result. "But," to add contrast. Or, when you give a choice, right? But in this lesson,

I want to focus more on the punctuation we use when we use conjunctions, coordinating

conjunctions especially. So what a coordinating conjunction is, is a joining word, a connecting

word that connects two independent ideas. Often independent, but somehow related ideas.

Okay? So I have three sentences on the board. We have, "I go to the gym on Saturday, and

I visit my parents." So if I ask you guys, "What do you do on Saturday? What do you usually

do on Saturday?" You say, "Okay, well, on Saturday, I go to the gym, and I visit my

parents." Right? Next one, "It didn't rain yesterday, so I went for a long walk." And

finally, "I wanted to go out, but none of my friends were available." Now, what you'll

notice about what is common in all of these sentences is what? The comma? Correct. Okay.

So here we have, "I go to the gym on Saturday, and I visit my parents." "It didn't rain yesterday,

so I went for a long walk." "I wanted to go out, but none of my friends were available."

The reason the comma is necessary is this. When you use a coordinating conjunction, like

"and," like "so," like "but," like "or," you are usually connecting two independent ideas.

Now, what I mean by this is you have two parts of a sentence, but those sentence parts both

have their own subject and their own verb. So, for example, "I go to the gym on Saturday."

The subject is "I." The verb is "go." This is an independent idea, right? It's called

an independent clause in this case. Here you have "and I visit my parents." "I visit my

parents" is also a separate idea. It can stand by itself. So when you connect two independent

ideas with a coordinating conjunction, and the two independent ideas, again, they have

a subject, they have a verb, you need to use a comma, okay?

So let's look at these one more time, and you can look at some examples in a quiz just

to test this understanding. Again, "I go to the gym on Saturday," independent idea, comma,

and another independent idea, "I visit my parents." "It didn't rain yesterday," comma, "so I went

for a long walk." As you can see, "I went for a long walk" is an independent idea. You're

joining it with a coordinating conjunction, so you need the comma before. "And I wanted

to go out, but none of my friends were available." "None of my friends" is the subject here, right?

They were available, "were" being the verb. So again, you're joining two ideas, "I wanted

to go out, none of my friends were available," you're connecting them with "but," you need

the comma. Okay, guys, if you want to test your understanding of this and improve your

writing, check out the quiz on www.engvid.com. Take care, and good luck.