<p>Hell All,</p>
<p>Please consider the following sentence:
I went to school, and I saw my teacher. </p>
<p>Surely it makes perfect sense, but I'm not sure whether it is grammatically fine to omit the subject "I" in the second clause, so that it becomes:</p>
<p>I went to school, and saw my teacher.</p>
<p>Also, is it grammatically OK if I omit the "," before "and", so that it becomes:</p>
<p>I went to school and I saw my teacher.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot!</p>
<p>so the rule is, </p>
<p>if you have " , and/or/but/so/for…" then the two sentence before and after it HAVE to be complete sentence. </p>
<p>If there’s no comma before “and”, then you can ONLY use the verb WITHOUT the subject</p>
<p>So “I went to school, and had dinner” is wrong and should be corrected as
<p>Hope this makes sense!</p>
<p>Angela</p>
<p>This is a matter of style. It is not “wrong” to say something like *I saw, and conquered<a href=“even%20though%20it%20is%20more%20conventional%20to%20omit%20the%20comma%20in%20the%20case%20of%20one%20independent%20clause”>/i</a> or to say something like *I saw and I conquered<a href=“even%20though%20it%20is%20more%20conventional%20to%20include%20the%20comma%20in%20the%20case%20of%20multiple%20independent%20clauses”>/i</a>.</p>
<p>In some cases, writers may want to include the comma in I saw, and conquered because they want the pause to be there for whatever reason. In some cases, writers may want to exclude the comma in I saw and I conquered because they want the sentence to have no pause and to flow smoothly and concisely, or for whatever other reason.</p>
<p>Punctuation is never directly tested on the SAT, so this should not be a problem. Just know that punctuation is very flexible. There aren’t many rules. You write to communicate things clearly, and saying something like I saw, and conquered is fully understood and not confusing at all (some may disagree, however), and why the comma was included is reasonably understood: we know it represents a pause, and therefore we understand the writer’s intention and don’t logically feel the need to call them out on the nonstandard usage of the comma for it, unless you’re a stickler.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot!</p>
<p>Hi crazybandit,
I just want to say thank you to you because some of your posts in other threads really helped me a lot. Are you a teacher or a student?</p>
<p>I’m a college student.</p>
<p>My English is not perfect. This is more of a question than a comments.</p>
<p>Rather than being correct or writing style, is it not more of what the writer wants to emphasis in his/her paragraph? </p>
<p>I went to school and (I) saw the teacher. Would be more in the context that one went to school to see the teacher, vs</p>
<p>I went to school, and (I) saw the teacher. Would be more like I went the school, the teacher was there and I saw her?</p>