Commas in space and time | The Comma | Punctuation | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

hello grammarians hello Paige hi David
so today we're going to be talking about
commas in space and time because commas
have basically one function which is
separating parts of sentences separating
parts of sentences and what's neat is
that we can use commas to separate stuff
out in space and separate stuff out in
time so I'm going to handle space Paige
is going to do time it's going to be
sweet so first of all one way in which
you can use commas to separate space is
by talking about addresses people's
physical addresses in space so the
fictitious detective private detective
Nero Wolfe one of my very favorites is
supposed to live at 454 West 35th Street
in New York so if I wanted to write mr.
Wolfe
a letter and I would write him a letter
because he hates talking to a phone I
would address it like so separating all
elements of his address with commas so
Nero Wolfe comma 454 West 35th Street
comma New York City or just New York
comma New York and then I would put the
zip code which i think is 1 0 0 0 1 but
I'm not sure if they have zip codes when
those stories took place so but that
doesn't matter you separate out all of
these elements with commas and this
isn't just for writing address this is
for referring to any point in space on
the planet so if I wanted to tell you
the name of my favorite city on the
planet I would say Waga dugu comma
Burkina Faso
real place I've never been there I would
like to go someday
and that is how you use commas in space
page how how our commas used in time so
commas are used in dates okay
so I could say on Tuesday comma October
5th comma 2010 comma I ate a cricket so
as you can see we've separated the day
of the week from the day of the month
right October 5th from the year 2010 and
then separated all that from the rest of
the sentence I ate a cricket because all
of this is like a prepositional phrase
that is modifying the word ate true so
we want to make sure that all of it is
separated out from the rest of the
sentence and we separate it out using
our friend the comma of course so if you
want to express a kind of complicated
relationship in time or in space you
want to deliver you want to make sure a
letter gets to a very specific place you
want to talk about a very specific city
in a very specific country you use
commas you want to talk about a very
specific time you use commas that's
commas in space and time my grammarians
you can learn anything Dave it out page
out