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Difficultés anglaises

> comma A very common punctuation mark (,). In modern usage there is a tendency to adopt a system of minimal punctuation and the comma is one of the casualties of this new attitude. Most people use the comma considerably less frequently than was formerly the case.• However there are certain situations in which the comma is still commonly used. One of these concerns lists. The individual items in a series of three or more items are separated by commas. Whether a comma is put before the "and" which follows the second-last item is now a matter of choice. Some people dislike the use of a comma before "and" in this situation, and it was formerly considered wrong. Examples of lists include - "at the sports club we can play tennis, squash, badminton and table tennis", "We need to buy bread, milk, fruit and sugar", and "They are studying French, German, Spanish and Russian". The individual items in a list can be quite long, as in "We opened the door, let ourselves in, fed the cat and started to cook a meal" and "They" consulted the map, planned the trip, got some foreign currency and were gone before we realized it". Confusion may arise if the last item in the list contains "and" in its own right, as in "In the pub they served ham salad, shepherd's pie, pie and chips and omelette". In such cases it as well to put a comma before the final "and".• In cases where there is a list of adjectives before a noun, the use of commas is now optional although it was formerly standard practice. Thus both "She wore a long, red, sequinned dress" and "She wore a long red sequinned dress" are used. When the adjective immediately before the noun has a closer relationship with it than the other adjectives no comma should be used, as in "a beautiful old Spanish village".• The comma is used to separate clauses or phrases that are parenthetical or naturally cut off from the rest of a sentence, as in "My mother, who was of Irish extraction, was very superstitious". In such a sentence the clause within the commas can be removed without altering the basic meaning. Care should be taken to include both commas. Commas are not normally used to separate main clauses and relative clauses, as in "The woman whom I met was my friend's sister". Nor are they usually used to separate main clauses and subordinate clauses, as in "He left when we arrived" and "They came to the party although we didn't expect them to". If the subordinate clause precedes the main clause, it is sometimes followed by a comma, especially if it is a reasonably long clause, as in "Although we stopped and thought about it, we still made the wrong decision". If the clause is quite short, or if it is a short phrase, a comma is not usually inserted, as in "Although it rained we had a good holiday" and "Although poor they were happy". The use of commas to separate such words and expression from the rest of the sentence to which they are related is optional. Thus one can write "However, he could be right" or "However" he could be right". The longer the expression is, the more likely it is to have a comma after it, as in "On the other hand, we may decide not to go".• Commas are always used to separate terms of address, interjections or question tags from the rest of the sentence, as in "Please come this way, Ms Brown, and make yourself at home", "Now, ladies, what can I get you?" and "It's cold today, isn't it?"• Commas may be used to separate main clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction, but this is not usual if the clauses have the same subject or object, as in "She swept the floor and dusted the table". In cases where the subjects are different and the clauses are fairly long, it is best to insert a comma, as in "They took all the furniture with them, and she was left with nothing".• A comma can be inserted to avoid repeating a verb in the second of two clause, as in "he plays golf and tennis, his brother rugby". Pour éviter fautes de grammaire, contresens et confusions. The English Usage Dictionary est le parfait complément des dictionnaires bilingues, du dictionnaire de définitions anglaises et du Thesaurus. Ce dictionnaire signale toutes les difficultés que recèle l'usage d'un mot: orthographe, grammaire, prononciation, homonymies, etc. Exemple d'article du dictionnaire English Usage Dictionary