Commas

Okay, okay I’ll be the first to admit that I was garbage at using commas in college (who’s kidding I’m much better, but not a comma master by any means) and realistically it doesn’t seem like learning about them has that much to do with the CARS section either. However, a lot of our CARS technique is going to rely on sentence level interpretation and for those really long, are-you-sure-they-aren’t-run-on, sentences having a foundational grasp of what commas do aids us in breaking down these sentences into more manageable and ultimately comprehensible bits.

So what is the point of commas exactly? While I could answer this question by talking about appositives, independent clauses, etc. I’m going to get straight to the key functions of commas and how we can use them to facilitate better comprehension of complex sentences. Do keep in mind commas have more functions than the ones I am mentioning here, but many of these don’t cause students problems so I am going to skip them.

What Do They Do?

In terms of aiding CARS comprehension commas serve three functions we care about: 1) they join two complete and related ideas together, 2) they signify a introductory statement is ending and the main sentence is starting, and 3) they separate out non-essential information that adds extra details.

By knowing a spotting these different functions we can simplify complex sentences a lot more easily and get to the core meaning of what is being said much, much faster. To see how this works let’s go through each type of

Joining Ideas

Independent Clauses: join two complete ideas

….while Manet’s progressive painful ataxia from age 40 yields little doubt on its tabetic origin, how he contracted syphilis at least 15-20 years before will probably remain a mystery. 

…Manet’s progressive painful ataxia from age 40 yields little doubt on its tabetic origin

…how he contracted syphilis at least 15-20 years before will probably remain a mystery. 

….we do not know whether he had any mistress at all, although he had several elegant ‘flirts’ in the mundane and artistic milieu.

…we do not know whether he had any mistress at all…

…he had several elegant ‘flirts’ in the mundane and artistic milieu.

Introductory Clauses: main part of the sentence is starting

With its facts and mysteries, the subtle interaction between Manet’s illness and his work output remains one of the most intriguing stories in neurology of art.

Non-Restrictive Clauses: contains extra but not necessary information
Apposotives: offer non-essential information

It is little known that Manet had a very painful second part of his life, due to excruciating limb and chest pains, which developed in parallel with proprioceptive ataxia and gait imbalance

It is little known that Manet had a very painful second part of his life… which developed in parallel with proprioceptive ataxia and gait imbalance

Later, the great but platonic passion of his life was the painter Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), who got married to Manet’s brother Eugène.

Later, the great but platonic passion of his life was the painter Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)…

Practice

Admixture, the exchange of genetic material between genetically divergent groups, is an increasingly documented phenomenon among animal taxa and almost as commonplace among plants, and today is considered a valuable source of new variation and diversification.

Now in the post-genomic era, interbreeding has started to break also into human evolutionary studies as a no longer negligible phenomenon. 

In particular, it is often eschewed by paleogenetics scholars, who rather refer to Neanderthal and Homo sapiens as intermixing ‘populations’ or ‘archaic groups’, while physical anthropologists emphasize morphological and developmental differences in favor of distinct species status