Nursing Preparation Study Guide

Nursing Preparation Study Guide Another important place to use commas is when you have a modifier that describes an element of a sentence, but that does not directly follow the thing it describes. Look at the sentence: “Timwent over to visit Beth, watching the full moon along the way.” In this sentence there is no confusion about who is “watching the full moon”; it is Tim, probably as he walks to Beth’s house. If you remove the comma, however, you get this: “Tim went over to visit Beth watching the full moon along the way.” Now it sounds as though Beth is watching the full moon, and we are forced to wonder what “way” the moon is traveling along. Commas are also used when adding introductory prepositional phrases and introductory ad-verbs to sentences. A comma is always needed following an introductory adverb. (“Quickly, Jody ran to the car.”) Commas are even necessary when you have an adverb introducing a clause within a sentence, even if the clause not the first clause of the sentence. (“Amanda wanted to go to the movie; however, she knew her homework was more important.”) With introductory prepositional phrases you only add a comma if the phrase (or if a group of introductory phrases) is five or more words long. Thus, the sentence you just read did not have a comma following its introductory prepositional phrase (“With introductory prepositional phrases”) because it was only four words. Compare that to this sentence with a five word introductory phrase: “After the ridiculously long class, the friends needed to relax.” The last main way that commas are used in sentences is to separate out information that does not need to be there. For instance, “My cousin Hector, who wore a blue hat at the party, thought you were funny.” The fact that Hector wore a blue hat is interesting, but it is not vital to the sentence; it could be removed and not changed the sentence’s meaning. There-fore, it gets commas around it. Along these lines you should remember that any clause introduced by the word that is considered to provide essential information to the sentence and should not get commas around it. Conversely, any clause starting with the word which is considered nonessential should not get commas around it. Subject Verb Agreement Verbs in any sentence must agree with the subject of the sentence both in person and number. Problems usually occur when the verb does not correspond with the right subject or the verb fails to match the noun close to it. • Each and Every – When nouns are qualified by “every” or “each,” they take a singular verb even if they are joined by “and”. o Examples: Each mother and daughter was a given separate test. -- Every teacher and student was properly welcomed. • Plural nouns – Nouns like measles, tongs, trousers, riches, scissors etc. are all plural. o Examples: The trousers are dirty. -- My scissors have gone missing. -- The tongs are on the table.

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