=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.=
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--
1. When several nouns follow one another, all being in the same case.
2. When several adjectives follow one another, all modifying the same noun.
3. When a succession of phrases modifies the same noun.
This kind of succession is called a _series_. Each new member gives a new idea, the comma being used to help the reader to separate one from the next with ease. Notice that the comma is used between the last two members before the coördinate conjunction as well as between the other members.
You can make no mistake in buying BCL Power Co. bonds now the company supplies power to mines and towns of Colorado Utah and Idaho it furnishes electric light and power to Ophir Ouray Ames Pandora and other towns in Colorado in Utah it supplies light to Mescal Eureka Provo Logan and Bingham it also furnishes power for the street railway systems of Salt Lake City Farmington and Ogden.