Punctuating a list | Punctuation | Grammar | Khan Academy
Hey Paige, what's up?
Damon: Is this right? Okay, so I'm about to go to the grocery store, and it looks like it says I need to get squid, pickles, and chocolate at the grocery store. Yeah, did you want squid pickles?
Paige: No, I wanted squid and pickles. I must have written it down wrong.
Damon: Okay, so I think the what we need to do in order to fix this list and avoid confusion like this in the future is using commas to punctuate a list. Because right now this just looks like, like squid pickles, which I mean probably delicious pickled squid.
Paige: Yeah, probably delicious, um, but not what we were looking to get today.
Damon: Right? So, okay, so if we do, if we don't want to get pickled squid today, then we have to put commas in between the elements of the list, right? Because this is what commas do: they separate elements of everything.
Paige: Exactly.
Damon: So let's put in those dividers. I need to get squid, comma, pickles, comma, and chocolate at the grocery store.
Paige: Exactly.
Damon: Okay, so we can punctuate a list by separating out nouns. And I see from this second sentence here, Paige, did you give me a read for that?
Paige: I'm gonna go for a run, read a chapter of my book, and go see the new Colonel Justice movie.
Damon: Oh, here, that's good. So right now it says that, but it could also just be, 'I'm going to go for a run, read a chapter of my book, and go see that,' you know, like there's no... it's a little confusing.
Paige: It's a little confusing.
Damon: Like there could be such a thing as a run read.
Paige: It probably is, you know, like where you go for a jog while holding a book? Sounds difficult.
Damon: So we can also use commas in lists to separate not just nouns, like in this first one, but also verb phrases. So I'm going to go for a run, comma, read a chapter of my book, comma, and go see the new Colonel Justice movie.
Paige: Perfect.
Damon: Cool, so that's how you punctuate a list with commas.
Paige: Yeah, you got it!
Damon: You can learn anything.
Paige: Dave out.
Damon: Paige out.