Essay Writing and Advanced Punctuation in English
The comma checklist
At last, we have arrived at the concluding paragraph. I will do the following things in this paragraph. I will:
1 restate the original aim of my essay
2 summarise my main findings
3 recognise some the limitations of my essay
4 state my contributions to the field (however small they may be)
5 make recommendations for further research work
(1) This essay set out to answer the question whether we should kill animals for food or not. (2) The discussion of naturalness has shown that the way we treat animals can not be considered as natural. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this essay is that our behaviour towards animals is based on our belief of superiority and the denial of their moral status because of a non-human way of thinking. As a result, we only have to apply our own human ethics to arrive at a point where the killing of animals does not seem to be justified any longer and has to be considered speciesist and thus morally wrong. (3) Since the essay is limited to the size of an examination paper, it is not possible to discuss the concepts of speciesm and painism in greater detail. (4) Notwithstanding these limitations, the findings suggest strongly that we have to change our morality in order to treat animals in a fair way and also to protect our environment from destruction. (5) Considerably more work will need to be done to determine the limitations of a life side by side with other species that we would grant lives without pain and in happiness.
As the final step of my essay-writing process, I will revise all the contents and check whether my punctuation is all right by asking the following questions from R.L.Trask about my commas.1
I. Can the comma be replaced by ‘and’ or ‘or’?
II. Is the comma followed by one of the FANBOYS?
III. Does it represent the absence of repetition?
IV. Does it form one of a pair of commas setting off an interruption which could be removed from the sentence?
V. Is there an introductory adverbial or any other similar introduction at the beginning or the end of the sentence? Can the words before the comma be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence?
If you you only have no’s, the comma should not be there.
I have also got an exercise for you, but first read the example, put commas or other marks that you think are necessary. Then check your commas, using the five questions above.
1 R. L. Trask (1997)
Now have a look at this example with me:
Make sure, that you do not put a comma, just because it would be necessary in German.
Question 1: Can the comma be replaced by ‘and’ or ‘or’?
No, it would not make sense.
Question 2: Is the comma followed by one of the FANBOYS?
No, neither of them.
Question 3: Does the comma represent the absence of repetition?
No, none of them.
Question 4: Does it form one of a pair of commas setting off an interruption which could be removed from the sentence?
No, if I take it out, I do not have a complete sentence anymore.
Question 5: Is there an adverbial or other introduction at the beginning or the end of the sentence?
No, they aren’t adverbial.
Well, I only got no’s. The commas must be wrong (because – as you have seen, of course – they follow German comma rules).
1 Adapted from: R.L.Trask: The Penguin Guide to Punctuation. Penguin Random House, 1997.