Exercise 173—The Comma (,)
Rule 1.—The comma is used to separate a direct quotation from the words of explanation.
For illustration see the foregoing exercises.
Write the following from dictation; then compare your version with the original:
Literature, the ministry, medicine, the law, and other occupations are hindered for want of men to do the work. To test this statement thoroughly you need only hunt up a first-class editor, reporter, business manager, foreman of a shop, mechanic, or artist in any branch of industry and try to hire him. You will find that he is already hired. He is sober, industrious, capable, reliable, and always in demand. He cannot get a day's holiday except by courtesy of his employer, or of his city, or of the great general public. But if you need idlers, shirkers, half-instructed, unambitious, and comfort-seeking editors, reporters, lawyers, doctors, and mechanics apply anywhere.—Mark Twain.
Rule 2.—The comma is used to separate the members of a series.
Exercise 174
Divide the following into sentences and supply the necessary commas:
Abraham Lincoln was a tall strong powerfully built boy he could lift a load cut down a tree or build a fence more quickly than any one else in the neighborhood his perseverance in his boyhood helps us to appreciate the firm true steady hand that guided our country through its great crisis Lincoln unceasingly showed his wise brain his great courage and his kindness of heart his character was not made in a day nor a month nor a year it was built up after years of yearning years of striving and years of hard work.
In the above point out the instances where the comma is used—