In the big family of punctuation marks, the comma is the black sheep. Few people recognize its significance, so they often leave it out, forcing it to define its purpose while remaining misunderstood by others.. However, the comma plays a crucial role, and when editing dissertation content, you must not overlook it.
The following are the primary areas you will want to make sure to bring cousin comma into the fold to ensure your thesis or dissertation is as complete as can be.
-Serial comma:
According to APA style, you should include the serial comma when writing a series of three or more items.
Incorrect: The little girl collects pennies, nickels and quarters.
Correct: The little girl collects pennies, nickels, and quarters.
-In dates that include both the day and year:
Incorrect: On July 7, 2007 they got married.
Correct: On July 7, 2007, they got married.
Notice a comma follows both the day and the year.
However, when you write only a month and year, you do not need commas unless the unit acts as an introductory clause. The following examples are both correct:
July 2007 was when they got married.
In July 2007, they got married.
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-To set off nonrestrictive clauses: Nonrestrictive clauses are extra information in a sentence. If removed, the sentence would still make sense.
Incorrect: His mother who was a great musician taught him to play piano.
Correct: His mother, who was a great musician, taught him to play piano.
-Between coordinate adjectives: Coordinate adjectives are descriptors that you can reorder while maintaining their meaning. In such cases, a comma should separate these adjectives.
Incorrect: The silly exuberant clown entertained the crowd.
Correct: The silly, exuberant clown entertained the crowd.
Quick tip: When you edit dissertations and are unsure whether to place a comma between adjectives, try mentally replacing the comma with and—if it makes sense, you should likely include the comma.
-Between an author’s name and the year inside parenthetical citations:
Incorrect: (Brown 2013).
Correct: (Brown, 2013).
-After using et al. in parenthetical citations: When editing dissertations, this is an often-overlooked placement for a comma, but when you think about it, this rule follows logically from the one just covered.
Incorrect: (Smith et al. 2013).
Correct: (Smith et al., 2013).
This rule applies when editing a dissertation but only for citations. Standard rules apply to et al. when writing out a sentence.
Incorrect: Smith et al. (2013), noted multiple instances of this phenomenon.
Correct: Smith et al. (2013) noted multiple instances of this phenomenon.
Correct: According to Smith et al. (2013), multiple instances of this phenomenon occurred.