ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos


Playlist Punctuation 34 videos

0
Comma Splices
5454 Views

Want even more deets on Comma Splices? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

1
Ellipses
1951 Views

Want even more deets on ellipses? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

2
Hyphens
1879 Views

The hyphen is used in all sorts of different situations, from making compound words to uniting adjectives to joining prefixes to words that have to...

See All

ACT English 1.5 Punctuation 438 Views


Share It!


Description:

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.

Related Videos

ACT English 2.2 Punctuation
2070 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 2. Where should the semi-colon be placed?

ACT English 3.1 Punctuation
1066 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 1. How should this sentence be changed so that it is grammatically correct?

ACT English 3.2 Punctuation
973 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 2. How should we properly hyphenate the words in this sentence?

ACT English 3.4 Punctuation
522 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 4. Which choice best formats this list of items?

ACT English 2.1 Punctuation
519 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 1. Which choice of punctuation best completes the sentence?