Commas and introductory elements | Punctuation | Grammar | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

hello grammarians paige and i are here
to teach you about introductory elements
in sentences and how commas relate to
them Paige what how do we how should we
define what an introductory element is
so it's pretty much something that
happens at the beginning of a sentence
it can be like a dependent clause or an
adverb but as we will see soon it's
something that is separated off with of
course a comma because that's what
commas do they are separators so let's
talk about dependent clauses first let
me just write out a sentence that begins
with a dependent clause when you come in
please take off your shoes and I've made
the difference between the dependent
clause and the independent clause pretty
clear so this is the dependent clause is
purple the independent clause is green
is there a need for a comma here of
course okay because we're leading with a
dependent clause and that means that
this thing can't stand on its own right
it's like it's like the ladder up
against the tree because an independent
clause and green can stand on its own a
dependent clause cannot so we need to
differentiate it from the rest of the
sentence by putting the comma there so
this is a dependent clause this is an
independent clause so if you start a
sentence with a dependent clause you're
going to need to put the comma in the
middle before you proceed to the
independent clause which is the part
that makes it an actual functioning
sentence right if you have it the other
way around though if it's just please
take off your shoes when you come in no
need for a comma I'll show you
you
so I'm not sure why this is I I think it
may just sort of be a style relic I'm
not entirely certain I mean if you go
back in American history and you look at
like the Federalist Papers and you look
at the way the people used commas in the
18th century it doesn't make a whole lot
of sense relative to how we use commas
today so a lot of this is cultural but I
can tell you that when an independent
clause comes before a dependent clause
you don't use a comma and if you are
uniting two independent clauses in the
following sentence I wrote an elephant
and then I ate a mango these two things
are both independent clauses right I
wrote an elephant then I ate a mango
right like these these two things I need
to be connected by this conjunction and
but that's not all they also need to be
joined by a comma now you could also sub
out if you wanted to you know get rid of
this comma in this end and put in a
semicolon but that's a story for another
time so if you're uniting two
independent clauses just do comma and
then a conjunction so that's one way to
think about how to use commas for
introductory elements like dependent and
independent clauses but there's also
another thing I want to introduce you to
and that's sentence adverbs follow us
over to the next screen so Paige what
what is a sentence adverb how does it
work so we've been talking about you
know starting sentences with clauses but
that doesn't always have to be the case
you can start a sentence with an adverb
like let's say initially I was afraid so
what is initially doing in this sentence
here in this expression basically it's
modifying like the whole rest of the
sentence it's modifying the I was afraid
so we're going to put a comma here to
separate it from the rest of that
expression that's why we call it a
sentence adverb because it's not this is
not the same as saying I was initially
afraid this is kind of like you said
modifying the entire expression let's
let's look at another example
basically you're the greatest thanks
page so we've got this word basically
basically is modifying the entire
expression it's kind of qualifying the
whole thing so we're going to put a
comma between this sentence adverb and
the sentence itself exactly cool
so initially page this seems pretty
complicated to me right but basically I
think we got it down all right we think
that essentially you can learn anything
Dave it out page out