Commas: clauses

Here begins a little series on commas. Commas go right to the heart of grammar so they’re tricky things to write about. Gotta do some background work on clauses first.

A clause is a group of words. Clause spotters say that a clause is made up of a subject and a predicate (something that describes the subject). I learnt to find a clause by looking out for the verb and I quite like the focus on the verb because it helps my mind get into gear about other things too – like correct tense or mode and subject-verb agreement…sorry, got a bit boring there.

So, yeah, look for the verb. This is a doing or being word and will be attached to a subject (the thing that is doing/being). I have put all the verbs I used up to this point in bold to help you see what a verb is. Sometimes it made more sense if I included some of the surrounding words in with the verb. This is called a verbal phrase. For example, is made includes two verbs (from the infinitives* ‘to be’ and ‘to make’) so both words merge into a verbal phrase.

*Infinitives. You may remember these from such things as French lessons. We have them in English too. They are the home of the verb. Look at the examples below to see how the verb breaks down from the infinitive so that we can use attach it to lots of different subjects (n.b. I have only included how they break down in the present tense):

Infinitive: to be
I am
You are
We/they are
He/she/it is

Infinitive: to make
I make
You make
We/they make
He/she/it makes

I guess infinitives are a helpful way to identify a verb: ask yourself if can you find a version of the word that you can put ‘to’ at the beginning of to make it into an infinitive. It takes some thought to do this though.

The way this will all relate to commas eventually is that commas can be used to separate clauses to help make writing clearer. And if you find a verb, you've probably found a clause. More on that another time though.

This sort of grammar is hard to get to grips with because, like emotions and thought, language seems to come, at least partly, from within us. It’s hard to explain why we do things that we have always done. Children have such an inherent understanding of grammar that they are sometimes over correct. For example, they know how verbs normally get changed into the past tense so they might say I runned instead of I ran.