Use commas where necessary

1. an unusually heavy suitcase.

2. a large red and yellow leaf.

3. a sick baby elephant.

4. a long difficult novel.

5. a very important business letter.

6. a soft old comfortable chair.

7. some beautiful delicate flowers.

8. an exciting children’s program.

9. a brand-new expensive sports car.

10. a difficult Russian class.

11. few modern office buildings.

12. a large winter coat.

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Insert commas as necessary to separate items in series in the following sentences.

1. Neither dogs snakes bees nor dragons frighten her.

2. Seals whales dogs lions and horses are all mammals.

3. Mammals are warm-blooded vertebrates that bear live young nurse them and usually have fur.

4. Seals are mammals but lizards and snakes and iguanas are reptiles and newts and salamanders are amphibians.

5. Amphibians also include frogs and toads.

6. Eagles geese ostriches turkeys chickens and ducks are classified as birds.

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Insert commas as necessary to separate items in series in the following sentences.

1. Our fire escapes were densely inhabited by mops short lines of washed socks geranium plants boxes of seltzer bottles and occasional dramatic scenes. (Kate Simon)

2. Meteorologists were commissioned to make detailed portraits of New Jersey’s coastal temperatures humidity precipitation fogs thunderstorms tornado potentialities and “probable maximum hurricanes.” (John McPhee)

3. She had no confidence in books written in English paid almost nothing for them and sold them for a small and quick profit. (Ernest Hemingway on Sylvia Beach)

4. It used to be understood that no matter how low your estimate of the public intelligence was how greedily you courted success or how much you debased your material in order to popularize it, you nevertheless tried to give the audience something. (Pauline Kael on contemporary movies)

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Insert commas in the following sentences:

1. He felt cut off from them by age by understanding by sensibility by technology and by his need to measure himself against the mirror of other men's appreciation. (Ralph Ellison)

2. The ox was solid black stood five feet high at the shoulder had a five-foot span of horns and must have weighed 1,200 pounds on the hoof. (Richard B. Lee)

3. Nothing is more essential to intelligent profitable reading than sensitivity to connotation. (Richard Altick)

4. She was wearing a full-skirted low-cut velvet gown.

5. Under the circumstances, only an intelligent discreet and experienced official should be assigned to the case.