Answers to Exercises
End Marks and Commas, pp. 334-337

What if my answers are correct?
If you find that all your answers match these, then the your punctuation skills are satisfactory.  Congratulations!

What if my answers are incorrect?
If you find that some of your answers don't match these, then continue to review the rules for end marks and commas.  You will also want to review the tips for finding and fixing fragments and run-ons.

Answers to Exercise on Adding End Marks, p. 334

Down with Skool!

         I am not against all schools. I am very much in favor of schools that consist of groups of porpoises or similar aquatic animals that swim together.  I only wish that I had been to one.  No, I’m thinking more of school in the dictionary sense as an institution or building at which children and young people usually under nineteen receive education.  That dictionary definition tells the story.  What a school of porpoises does is to play.  Skool is for work.  It is an institution.  Why put children in an institution?  The real reason is that it gets the brats out from under the parents’ feet.  The purported reason is that this is the best way to get useful information into the skulls of the little darlings.  How absurd!  Children are more intelligent than adults and wiser.  Instead of instilling into them the accepted knowledge and wisdom of the past, what we ought to be doing is leaning from them.  That would be my idea of a good school: one run by children—or porpoises.
 

Answers to Exercise on Creating Sentences with Commas, p. 335-36
(Answers will vary.)

Answers to Exercise on Using Commas, p. 336-37

  1. If you are the last person to leave the room, please turn out the lights.  (AFTER introductory stuff)
  2. The last person to leave the room should shut off the copier machine, turn out the lights, and lock the door. (BETWEEN items in a series)
  3. On Christmas, Eve is going to marry Adam. (AFTER introductory stuff)
  4. Pete Rose, a professional baseball player for over twenty years, broke Ty Cobb’s record of 4,191 career hits. (AROUND non-essential interrupting stuff)
  5. People who carry grenades and automatic rifles should be prevented from boarding planes. (not AROUND essential stuff)
  6. The new clerk, the one with the phony eyeglasses and the red rubber nose, is a real clown. (AROUND non-essential interrupting stuff)
  7. Edwina simplified her life by giving away her electric can opener, automatic popcorn maker, and ceramic bun warmer. (BETWEEN items in a series)
  8. Clark County Landfill, which was opened just last week, has been declared an environmental hazard. (AROUND non-essential interrupting stuff)
  9. Cigarettes that contain low tar and nicotine may be no safer than regular brands.  (not AROUND essential stuff)
  10. In autumn, the leaves turn various shades of red, orange, and gold. (AFTER introductory stuff and BETWEEN items in a series)
Answers to Exercise on Adding Commas to Paragraphs, p. 337-38

Frederick Douglass

        The son of a white man and a black slave, Frederick Douglass spent his early years in slavery but escaped in 1838 and became a leading orator journalist and abolitionist.  One stormy night Douglass was traveling from New York to Boston by boat.  Because his African-American ancestry disqualified him from occupying a cabin or any of the public rooms, he was obliged to curl up in a corner of the deck to sleep.  An officer came across him there and took pity on him.  Knowing that he could find Douglass a stateroom if he could pass him off as an American Indian, the officer approached him with the words, “You’re an Indian, aren’t you?”  Douglass immediately grasped the significance of the question.  Looking the officer straight in the eyes, he replied, “No, sir, I’m a nigger,” and curled up in his corner again.

The Least Successful Car

        In 1957 Ford produced the car of the decade—the Edsel.  Half of the models sold proved to be spectacularly defective.  If lucky, the proud owner of an Edsel could enjoy any or all of the following features: doors that wouldn’t close, hoods and trunks that wouldn’t open, batteries that went dead, horns that stuck, hubcaps that dropped off, paint that peeled, transmissions that seized up, brakes that failed, and push buttons that couldn’t be pushed even with three people trying.  In a stroke of marketing genius, the Edsel, one of the largest and most lavish cars ever built, coincided with rising public interest in economy cars.  As Time magazine reported, “It was a classic case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time.”  Never popular to begin with, the Edsel quickly became a national joke.  One business writer at the time likened the car’s sales graph to an extremely dangerous ski slope.  He added that so far as he knew, there was only one case of an Edsel ever being stolen.

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