4 mistakes learners make with commas, each one named and explained.
A comma marks a boundary the reader needs, so it goes between parts, never between a subject and its verb.
'She, likes reading books about animals' is chosen.
A short pause after the person being talked about feels natural when the sentence is read aloud slowly.
Question. She likes reading.
A common answer. She, likes reading.
The answer. She likes reading.
Why. Nothing is being separated: the subject and its verb belong together.
Never cut a subject off from its verb.
'The dog ran quickly, across the garden' is chosen, splitting the verb from where it happened.
Reading aloud invites a breath, and a breath gets written down as a comma whether the grammar wants one or not.
Question. The dog ran quickly across the garden.
A common answer. ran quickly, across the garden
The answer. The dog ran quickly across the garden.
Why. Where it ran is part of the same idea as the running.
A comma separates parts that could stand apart, not the inside of one part.
'I went to the shops and, bought some milk' is chosen.
A pause is heard somewhere around the join, and the conjunction is the most visible thing there to put it next to.
Question. I went to the shops and bought some milk
A common answer. and, bought some milk
The answer. shops, and bought some milk
Why. The comma marks where the parts meet, which is before the joining word, not after it.
The comma goes in front of the conjunction. Never behind it.
'What an incredible performance that was' is given a full stop or a question mark.
It opens with what, which is how questions usually start, and a full stop is the mark that ends most sentences, so both are reasonable guesses if the sentence is not read as a whole.
Question. What an incredible performance that was
A common answer. a question mark, because it starts with what
The answer. an exclamation mark
Why. It is not asking anything: it is an exclamation about how good the performance was.
Decide what the sentence is doing before choosing how to end it.
WAJD spots these patterns in your child's answers and names the one behind their wrong answers, instead of just marking them wrong.