Lesson video

Hi, I'm Mr. Buckingham, and I'm so glad you've decided to join me for today's lesson.

This revision lesson is going to cover several different pieces of punctuation, and I think you're going to find it really useful.

I'm really looking forward to it, so let's make a start.

Today's lesson is called Commas, Brackets and Dashes Revision, and it comes from my unit called Review, including word class, sentence types, tense, commas and colons.

By the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to practise commas, brackets and dashes test questions.

Now, commas, as you probably know, are one of our most flexible pieces of punctuation, and they have lots of different uses, which we're going to try and cover a few of today.

We'll also look in detail at how we can punctuate parenthesis, and we'll be doing lots of test-style questions along the way.

Hopefully, it's going to be really useful.

Let's get to work.

Here's our vocabulary for today's lesson.

My turn, your turn, comma, parenthesis, brackets and dashes.

Well done.

So, a comma is a punctuation mark used to demarcate phrases, clauses, items on a list or parenthesis, so it has many uses.

We'll cover a few of those today.

Parenthesis is additional information added to a sentence that can be removed.

Brackets are a punctuation mark that can be used to demarcate, or show, parenthesis, and dashes are also a punctuation mark that can be used to demarcate, or show, parenthesis.

Here's our lesson outline for today.

We're going to start off by looking at commas, and then we'll move on to looking at different types of punctuation we can use to show parenthesis.

Now, commas, as I'm sure you know, have many functions.

They usually separate, or demarcate, different things from each other.

So, one thing they do is to separate items in a list.

For instance, "Sprinting," comma, "dribbling," comma, "passing," comma, "shooting and communicating are all key skills in football." "Last weekend, I went swimming," comma, "played with my friends," comma, "visited my dad and went for a walk." "At school, we wear black shoes," comma, "black trousers," comma, "a white T-shirt and a blue jumper." So, in all these cases, hopefully you can see the comma is separating items in the list.

In the first example, it's separating key skills in football, sprinting, dribbling, passing, shooting and communicating.

We've used commas between the items, but not before "and".

So, when we're listing things like this, we use commas to separate out the different items, but not before "and".

So, if you look at number two, we've got a comma after swimming, the first thing we did, a comma after playing with our friends, the second thing we did, but then in between those last two items, we use "and" instead of the comma, and that's always the same when we're listing items using commas.

We have commas between the items, but not before "and".

We can also use commas in noun phrases like this, a small, comma, empty room.

Here we've put a comma to separate those two adjectives that describe the noun "room".

So, where should the commas be placed in each of these sentences? Pause the video and think carefully about where we need commas in these lists.

Have a go.

Well done, good effort.

So, in A, we can see we've got the following items in our list, some slippers, his oldest shoes, a lot of changes of clothes and his teddy bear.

So, we're going to put the commas after slippers and after shoes, but not between those last two items because we've used "and".

In B, we've got these items, "we went to the arcades, made sandcastles, visited the castle, went on a boat trip and got ice cream." So, we're going to put commas after arcades, sandcastles and castle, but not between the last two items because we've used "and".

And in C, we've got these items on our list, "singing, dancing, poetry, art and drama." So, we put commas after singing, dancing and poetry, but not after art because we've got that word "and" instead.

Really good job for getting those.

Now, commas are also used to demarcate, or to show, the boundary of fronted adverbial words, phrases and clauses from the rest of a sentence, from the complete sentence that comes after that fronted adverbial.

So, we could start with this complete sentence, "The snow began to fall." There's no comma, but we could add a fronted adverbial word, "Soon," comma, "the snow began to fall." We could add a fronted adverbial phrase, "Just then," comma, "the snow began to fall," or a fronted adverbial clause, "As the sun rose," comma, "the snow began to fall." In each case, we've added a fronted adverbial before what would be a complete sentence, and there's always a comma after that fronted adverbial.

We could remove that fronted adverbial and the sentence would still make sense.

Let's review that.

So, we've got the adverbial added to the start of the sentence.

That's what makes it a fronted adverbial.

It could be removed and the sentence would still make sense.

It would still say, "The snow began to fall," in this case, and it's followed by a comma.

Now, if we have a sentence, which we're trying to punctuate, which we think contains a fronted adverbial, we can tell where to place the comma by identifying the part of the sentence that makes complete sense because the rest, the bit in front of that part, must be the adverbial.

Let me show you, I could have this sentence, "After the noise died down he rose to speak." In this sentence, "he rose to speak" is a complete sentence.

It could be a sentence on its own.

So, the part in front of that must be the adverbial, so we would put the comma at the end of that fronted adverbial, "After the noise died down," comma, "he rose to speak." So, let's see if you can highlight the adverbial in each sentence.

Pause the video and decide, where is that adverbial and where would the comma go at the end? Have a go.

Good job, well done.

So, in A, we've got, "Before the day is over we will have completed it." "We will have completed it" could be a complete sentence, so "Before the day is over" must be the adverbial, and it's followed by a comma.

In B, we've got, "In the last few days we have learned a lot." "We have learned a lot" could be the complete sentence, so "In the last few days" must be the adverbial.

And in C, we've got, "As the moon shone we picked our way through the forest." "We picked our way through the forest" is the complete sentence, so "As the moon shone" must be the adverbial.

Really well done, let's try another one.

I wonder if you can insert a comma into each sentence to show where that adverbial ends.

Pause the video and have a think.

Great, and so well done.

In A, we've got, "After a very long time we all realised it was a mistake." So, "we all realised it was a mistake" must be the complete sentence, so the comma would go after "After a very long time".

In B, we've got, "Soon we would realise our mistake and we'd regret it." So, we're going to have "Soon" here as our adverbial because "we would realise our mistake and we'd regret" is the complete sentence.

In C, we've got, "When we realised our mistake we were filled with regret." "We were filled with regret" is a complete sentence, so we're going to put the comma after this adverbial, "When we realised our mistake." So, each time, the comma follows the fronted adverbial, that adverbial could be removed, and we'd be left with a complete sentence.

Really well done if you got those commas in the right place.

So, let's practise both the skills we've practised so far.

These sentences contain both adverbials and lists of items. So, which of them are correctly punctuated with commas to show both those things? Pause the video and have a really careful think.

Well done, great effort.

So, A is not correctly punctuated.

Here we can see we've put a comma before "and" there in our list.

That doesn't work.

B is correctly punctuated.

We've got a comma after that adverbial, "In recent years," and then we've got commas in the list, higher temperatures, more extreme weather, and then no comma before "and".

C is also correctly punctuated.

We've got a comma after that adverbial, "When it was finally time to go," and we've got commas in the right place in that list, with no comma before "and".

This last one is not correctly punctuated because we don't have a comma after that adverbial.

There's no comma after, "When it was finally time to go", so that's not correct.

Really well done if you got that one, great job.

Now, commas can also be used to separate items in order to make our meaning clear.

For instance, let's look at this sentence, "If I ask Alex Lucas, Jun, Andeep and Sofia over, can they stay the night?" And let's look at this other version with a different comma.

"If I ask Alex, Lucas, Jun, Andeep and Sofia over, can they stay the night?" I bet you spotted the difference there.

Here, adding that comma between Alex and Lucas makes clear these are two separate people.

It's not someone called Alex Lucas, but in the first example, that's what it looks like.

It doesn't look like those are two separate items on the list, so the comma helps us to make our meaning clear.

Here's another example, "As I picked up the crystal glass, vases were being smashed around me." If I changed the position of the comma, it could say this, "As I picked up the crystal, glass vases were being smashed around me." So, here, changing the position of the comma changes what's being picked up, and also what's being smashed in these sentences, so the meaning has changed.

Okay, let's practise that.

I'd like you to look at these pairs of sentences, and I'd like you to think about how the difference in the comma in the second example changes the meaning.

So, for the first two, how does the different comma in number two change the meaning? And for the second two, how does that extra comma in the second one change the meaning? Pause the video and see if you can explain how the meaning has changed each time.

Have a go.

Well done, good effort.

So, in the first one, we can see adding that comma after "eat" makes clear something really important.

It makes clear that we don't want to eat mum.

The first one says, "Let's eat Mum," but if we say, "Let's eat," comma, "Mum," we're talking to mum.

We're saying, "Let's eat, Mum," and that makes clear we're not asking to eat mum.

In the second example, we've got the same issue we had before.

In the first one, it says, "Can Laura, Sam Jacob and Sofia come over?" That makes it sound like Sam Jacob is a person, but we've got Laura, Sam, Jacob and Sofia as four different people in this list.

So, here, the comma in that second sentence makes clear that Sam and Jacob are two different people and not one person called Sam Jacob.

So, the comment is really helpful in both these cases to make our meaning really clear.

Really well done if you were able to explain those differences.

So, let's do our first task for this lesson.

I'm going to show you some sentences, and I want you to add in all the necessary commas to each sentence.

Here are the sentences that might contain adverbials, that require a comma after them, and they might contain lists of items that need commas to separate them.

Pause the video and decide where all those commas should be placed.

Well done, really good effort.

Let's take a look together.

In A, we've got a comma after that adverbial, "Although many people hate vegetables," and we've got commas between the items in the list, potatoes, comma, cucumber, comma, swede, comma, broccoli, and then no comma before "and".

Great job.

In B, we've got a comma after that adverbial, "Along the way," and then commas in our list items, but not after rolling hills because we've got "and" there.

In C, we've got a comma after that adverbial, "When we were on residential," and here we've got quite long items in our list.

"We climbed on rocks, walked up a huge hill, went caving, had a midnight feast and," so no comma before "and", "sang songs around the campfire." And in the last one, we've got a comma after "Before long", our adverbial, and then we've got a list of just three items here, "the squabbles, the constant bickering and the teasing," so we just need one comma between the first two items in that list and no comma before "and".

Really good job.

You've managed to get all those commas in the correct place, great work.

Okay, we've talked about some of the different uses of commas.

Now we're going to move on to looking at different punctuation for parenthesis.

As you might know, parenthesis is information that's added to a sentence that could be removed and the sentence would still make sense.

So, for instance, in this sentence, we've said, "The Pacific Ocean - the largest in the world - is found between Asia and the Americas." Here, the parenthesis is "the largest in the world".

Notice how it has dashes on either side of it.

That could be removed and the sentence would read, "The Pacific Ocean is found between Asia and the Americas." This is some extra information we've added into the sentence.

It's not necessary to the sentence, it's additional.

In this one, we've said, "Place 100g of butter (about 4 tablespoons) into a bowl." Here we've used brackets around the parenthesis.

Again, it's extra information added into the sentence.

And finally, here we've written, "Rome, a city of three million people, is the capital of Italy." Here we've used commas around the parenthesis.

So, parenthesis can be shown using either brackets, dashes or commas, and the parenthesis is extra information.

We can find the parenthesis by looking for the part of the sentence that can be removed, and then the rest of the sentence should still make sense.

So, as we said, for the first one, if we remove that parenthesis, the sentence still makes sense.

For the second example, if we remove it, it now says, "Place 100g of butter into a bowl." That makes sense, and for the last one, it would say, "Rome is the capital of Italy." So, those sentences work without the parenthesis because parenthesis is additional, and we've said it can be shown, demarcated, using brackets, dashes or commas.

So, which of these sentences contain parenthesis? That's extra information added into the sentence, with punctuation marks on either side.

It's additional information.

The rest of the sentence should make complete sense on its own.

Pause the video and decide which sentences contain parenthesis.

Well done, good job.

A does not contain parenthesis.

We've got, "We bought bread," with commas on either side, but if we were to remove that, the sentence would say, "For the picnic, cheese and pickled onions." That doesn't make sense, so this isn't parenthesis.

It's not additional, it's essential to the sentence.

B does contain parenthesis.

We've said here, "For the picnic, in our local park, we bought bread and cheese." I could remove "in our local park" and the sentence would say, "For the picnic, we bought bread and cheese," and that would make sense.

So, that is additional information, it's not essential.

For C, we do not have parenthesis here.

We do have one dash at the end.

It says, dash, "the wind was so strong," but we don't have dashes on either side, so this isn't parenthesis in this case.

And for D, let's see.

Yes, we do have parenthesis.

Here we've said, "Several trees <v ->including a very old sycamore -</v> had been felled in the night." Here we could remove "including a very old sycamore", the parenthesis, and the sentence would say, "Several trees had been felled in the night." That makes sense, so that shows the parenthesis was extra information, and it's got dashes on either side.

So, yes, there's parenthesis there.

Really well done if you got those two.

Now, let's try another one.

In this sentence, what is the parenthesis, and what punctuation could be used instead of commas to show it? So, you're looking for the part of the sentence that could be removed, leaving a sentence that already makes complete sense.

Remember, parenthesis is extra information.

Pause the video and decide, what's the parenthesis, and how else could we show it instead of using commas? Have a go.

Well done, good effort.

So, hopefully you spotted that the parenthesis is "a tiny, graceful thing", because if we removed that, the sentence would say, "As the door swung open, a bird fluttered in and landed by the fireplace." This is extra information about that bird.

We've put it in there just to give some more detail.

It's not essential.

So, we could show that in two different ways.

We could show it with brackets, like this, "A tiny, graceful thing" has brackets on either side, or we could do it with dashes.

So, each time, we've demarcated the parenthesis to show this is additional information that we've added in.

Really well done.

So, which of these sentences are correctly punctuated to show the parenthesis? Pause the video and have a careful think.

Great effort, well done, good thinking.

So, A, the parenthesis says, "thrilled, absolutely thrilled," and then, if we removed that, the sentence would say, "I'm to be here today, presenting this award." That doesn't make sense, does it? So, this is not correctly punctuated.

For B, if we remove that parenthesis in brackets, or what looks like it should be parenthesis, then it would say, "The 2024 Olympics in will be a wonderful festival of sporting prowess." That doesn't make sense, so this can't be correctly punctuated.

Let's look at the correct versions of those sentences.

For C, we've said "in Paris, France" is the parenthesis, and if we removed that, the sentence would say, "The 2024 Olympics will be a wonderful festival of sporting prowess." That makes sense, so that must be additional information that we've added into a sentence that already made sense, and it's got brackets on either side, so this is correctly punctuated.

In D, if we removed "absolutely thrilled", it would say, "I'm thrilled to be here today, presenting this award," so that tells us this is parenthesis.

It's been added into a sentence that already works, and it's extra detail with the dashes on either side, so this is correctly punctuated.

Really well done if you spotted those subtle differences.

So, parenthesis can also be a relative clause, and that's a type of subordinate clause that starts with a relative pronoun.

That's words like who, which, whose, where or when, and you might remember that a subordinate clause is a type of clause that contains a verb, like all clauses, but doesn't make complete sense on its own.

So, a relative clause is a type of subordinate clause that starts with a relative pronoun.

So, here we've said, "Africa, which is the world's second-largest continent, is composed of an incredible 54 different countries!" I know that's a relative clause, "which is the world's second-largest continent," because it begins with the relative pronoun "which", and I know it's parenthesis because it's extra information about Africa.

In this example, I've said, "The headteacher - whose face was purple with rage - told us to sit down silently." Again, this must be a relative clause because it starts with the relative pronoun "whose".

And here I've said, "Abraham Lincoln (who was assassinated in 1865) was the 16th president of the USA," and here we've used the relative pronoun "who".

So, again, with these relative clauses, we could use commas or dashes or brackets to demarcate the relative clause, and we know it's parenthesis because it could be removed and the sentences would still make sense.

That first one would say, "Africa is composed of an incredible 54 different countries!" The second one would say, "The headteacher told us to sit down silently," and the last one would say, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the USA." The fact that we can remove those relative clauses and the sentences still make sense tells us two things, that that was extra information that's been added in and that, therefore, it's parenthesis, with punctuation on either side.

So, let's see if you can try that.

Where could punctuation for parenthesis be placed in these sentences, which all contain relative clauses? You can choose which type of punctuation you use here, brackets, dashes or commas.

You might choose differently to me.

That's okay, as long as you put it in the right place.

Pause the video and have a think.

Well done, great effort.

So, in A, we've got the relative clause, "which is known for its castle," so I've chosen brackets around that parenthesis.

You might have chosen dashes or commas.

For B, I can see that relative pronoun "who".

That must be the start of the relative clause, so it must be, "who was born in 1676," and I'm going to do dashes this time.

For C, I can see that relative pronoun "where", so the relative clause must be, "where the 2012 Olympic Games were held," and I've used commas around it on this occasion.

And in D, I've got the relative pronoun "when", so I'm going to use brackets for, "when we celebrate the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt." And each time, this is extra information because if we removed that parenthesis, the sentences would still make complete sense.

If we look at number one, A, if we removed that parenthesis, it would say, "Our local town has a population of 12,000 people," already a complete sentence.

We've added in extra information, with our punctuation on either side.

Really well done if you got your punctuation in the same place.

So, let's do our final task for this lesson.

I'm going to show you some sentences which contain different types of parenthesis.

It might be a relative clause or it might not.

I want you to add bracket, dashes or commas, your choice, to show the parenthesis in each of these sentences.

Here are your sentences.

Pause the video and decide, what is the extra information that's been added in that could have punctuation on either side to indicate that it's parenthesis that could be removed, leaving a complete sentence? Pause the video and have a go.

Fantastic effort, well done.

Let's take a look.

Now, remember, you could use any of the three types of punctuation.

You might use a different one to me.

Just make sure you've got it in the same place.

So, in A, I've got the parenthesis, "the largest in the area." If I removed that, the sentence would say, "Our school is the only one in our town." So, that works.

For B, I've said, "who has always helped me a lot." That one's a relative clause, and if I removed it, the sentence would say, "Mr. Martinez is my favourite teacher." For C, my parentheses is "despite the wind", and here I've used commas.

Without it, the sentence would say, "Somehow we managed to climb the hill." For D, I've used dashes to show a relative clause.

"Which is England's highest mountain" is our parenthesis.

If I removed it, it would say, "Scafell Pike is located in the Lake District." For E, I've used brackets to show "the smallest country in the UK" is our parenthesis.

Without it, the sentence would read, "Northern Ireland has its capital in Belfast." And finally, I've used commas here to show "after a long wait" as my parenthesis, and it's interrupted that sentence, "Finally, Miss O'Neill called us into the room." Hopefully, you've got your punctuation in the same place.

Each time, it's really important we remember this parenthesis is extra information that's just adding to the sentence, and we could remove it and the sentence would still make sense.

Really good job if you managed to punctuate those correctly.

Let's review our learning in this lesson.

We learned that commas can be used to separate items in a list, and that commas are also used after fronted adverbials.

We've learned that parenthesis is information added into a sentence that could be removed, and it could take the form of a relative clause, and we've learned that we can mark parenthesis using brackets, dashes or commas.

We've talked about lots of different uses for punctuation today, and I'm really impressed with how well you've done.

Great effort in this lesson, and I'd love to see you again in a future one.

Goodbye.