Why is there a coma in this sentence?

[TheAttachedMama]

My daughter is doing her Daily Language Review.

 

The answer key says the corrected sentence should be:

 

Our flight to Paris, France, left on time at 5:54 from Dallas, Texas.  

 

We both want to know why is there a comma after France and before the word "left"?  

 

Thanks!

 

 

[TheAttachedMama]

Maybe I need to do some daily language review!   I just realized my title says COMA not comma!   hahahahaha   

 

 I feel like I am in a coma at this point doing school at 6PM on a MONDAY in JUNE.   Ugh.   

[nixpix5]

When both city and country are used together they both get commas because they are treated as a Paranthetical element. When the state becomes a possessive form this rule no longer applies.

 

Paris, France's Eiffel Tower is...

Edited June 19, 2017 by nixpix5

[Mrs Twain]

Haha. That was really funny that your sentence had a coma it.

 

The rule is that you always put a comma in that situation when there is a [city, country,] or else [city, state,] in the middle of the sentence. I don't know the reason for it, but we learned that in R&S English.

[DawnM]

Maybe I need to do some daily language review!   I just realized my title says COMA not comma!   hahahahaha   

 

 I feel like I am in a coma at this point doing school at 6PM on a MONDAY in JUNE.   Ugh.   

 

 

It really is a bad day to mention comas.

[Ravin]

My daughter is doing her Daily Language Review.

 

The answer key says the corrected sentence should be:

 

Our flight to Paris, France, left on time at 5:54 from Dallas, Texas.  

 

We both want to know why is there a comma after France and before the word "left"?  

 

Thanks!

 

Snarky answer to the thread title: Because it's a boring grammar exercise?

 

Actual answer: Because a comma goes after a formal place name or address. 

[Lori D.]

LOL! Love your thread title.   :laugh:

____________________________

 

So, in answer to why is there a comma in the sentence of your example:

 

It's similar to the commas used on either side of an appositive, which renames the noun right after the noun is used, or provides additional information about the noun. Think of it as a sort of written, "whispered aside" for clarification. The commas are used to make it clear that you are briefly interrupting the body of the sentence for a quick aside of clarifying or renaming.

 

 example of an appositive: "Susan, my mother, graduated from college in 1969."

 

The appositive is like a whispered aside of extra info to your listener. Here, the appositive is "my mother", which is "renaming" the subject Susan, or providing extra info about Susan. The commas of the appositive almost work like a visual picture of cupping you hands around your mouth when you get to the appositive and dropping your voice to a whisper to say "my mother", and then the taking your hands down and resuming the sentence at normal volume.

 

I picture it like a sort of condensed conversation that might have looked like this:

 

me = "Susan..."

my listener (puzzled expression, as they can't place who Susan is) =  :confused1:

me (cupping my mouth and whispering) = "You know -- Susan -- my mom."

my listener (expression clears, and nods, now knowing who I mean) =  :thumbup1:

me = "So, anyways, Susan graduated from college in 1969."

 

Similarly, with multi-word geographic locations, or multi-word dates, or two-word titles that go with a person's names, commas are used to off-set the two-word geographic location from the rest of the sentence to show that is an "aside" of additional information.

 

So in your original example you are clarifying or specifying that it is the big city of Paris, France, in a foreign country -- and not the small town of Paris, Texas, which is in the same state as Dallas, Texas.

 

commas in a multi-word date example:

"Sunday, December 7, 1941, is a date that will live in infamy."

[so the first comma is the start of the aside of extra info to specify *which* Sunday -- a December 7th Sunday -- and the second comma is almost an aside within an aside to specify which year that particular December 7th was in -- and then the final comma completes the aside of additional specific information so that the sentence can continue]

 

commas in a multi-word title example:

"John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, Jr., is his name."

[so the Jr. is off-set by commas as it it the extra clarifying info that this is not the original John Jacob, but it is the son (junior)]

 

 

Wishing you all the best as you finish up your Grammar adventures for the year! :) Warmest regards, Lori D.

 

 

Edited June 20, 2017 by Lori D.

[SKL]

Am I the only person who thinks the comma is wrong?  :leaving:

[Guest]

France is an appositive.

[ikslo]

Am I the only person who thinks the comma is wrong? :leaving:

I know it is correct, but I have always thought it a stupid rule.

[Alessandra]

My first thought was that they are not flying United ("on time.")

Edited June 20, 2017 by Alessandra

[Ellie]

Am I the only person who thinks the comma is wrong?  :leaving:

 

And you would be wrong. :D

 

Without the second comma, you have a sentence splice, or a sentence and a fragment, or something, lol. This would be the fragment: "Our flight to Paris." The sentence would be this: "France left on time at 5:54 from Dallas, Texas."

 

Way too many people are leaving out that second comma, and it makes me twitch every.single.time I see it.

[Farrar]

I have read this rule before so I know it, but I admit that it does look wrong to me because it doesn't *feel* like France is an appositive. I get why it is, but generally appositives have an aside feel in a sentence, like Lori's example where "my mother" is an appositive. I know it's one that I often forget. I had to recall it for a Daily Language Review as well (or possibly it was for a Daily Paragraph Editing) and I remember I initially said, well, that's wrong. And then I had to stop and think and say, oh, no, wait, I know this rule...

[Bluegoat]

It would feel really wrong to me to NOT have it.  I mean, it's clearly there if you say that phrase out loud.

[SKL]

Just for the record so y'all don't think I'm just an illiterate nincompoop, I got 100% on a standardized graduate English test without studying ... I'm pretty good at grammar ... it's possible this is one of those rules that has changed since my high school English teacher learned it.  ;)

[TheAttachedMama]

Well, I never knew this rule!!   Thanks, everyone!  

[Lori D.]

I have read this rule before so I know it, but I admit that it does look wrong to me because it doesn't *feel* like France is an appositive. I get why it is, but generally appositives have an aside feel in a sentence, like Lori's example where "my mother" is an appositive. I know it's one that I often forget. I had to recall it for a Daily Language Review as well (or possibly it was for a Daily Paragraph Editing) and I remember I initially said, well, that's wrong. And then I had to stop and think and say, oh, no, wait, I know this rule...

 

Perhaps we tend to think of geographic locations differently because of addressing envelopes, where we DO use the first comma, but we don't use the second comma or a period:

 

Mssr. Poe

1234 Rue de Morgue

Paris, France  98765

 

 

It's just with geographic locations (and with dates: "December 7th, 1941, is Pearl Harbor Day.") we almost always automatically include both pieces of information -- city AND state (or city AND country) -- and with dates, both month/day AND year. In contrast, for most other nouns, we don't automatically add that appositive for clarification -- just when we see our listener or reader needs that clarification.

 

It just takes a little shift in perspective to see it in the same light as the "my mother" appositive (my example in the previous post), that it is adding clarification or an additional detail of information as a kind of aside. ;) Like I said above, from the Paris, France, example, it's an aside to specify where that city is:

 

Our flight to Paris, France, left on time at 5:54 from Dallas, Texas.  

["Paris -- you know, in France, and not our little Texas town of Paris -- anyways, our flight to Paris was on time."]

 

 

 

Totally an aside -- lol, a real aside and not an appositive: 

Now, the comma that always trips me up is the last comma before the "and" in a list of items (that's called the Oxford comma, or the Serial comma):

 

"We went to Paris, London, and Rome."

 

I came out of a journalism background from many years back (before the digital age), when everything was still printed by press. At that time, the Oxford comma was left out for spacing/streamlining reasons, but also because it was redundant -- in this type of sentence the commas mean the same thing as "and": Paris and London and Rome. To use both that third comma AND "and" is an inelegant redundancy. Also, I read a lot of books by British authors, and the British style format is to leave off the Oxford comma, while the American style format is to include it.

 

I just hate the inelegance of the redundancy in the American style format, and it always kills me to have to mark that one in my student's papers -- because *I* tend to leave it off in my *own* writing -- out of habit and because I think it is more concise. ;) Just my way of "fighting the format system", I guess.  :laugh:

 

Grammar geek, much?!  :tongue_smilie:

Edited June 20, 2017 by Lori D.

[Ellie]

 

It's just with geographic locations (and with dates: "December 7th, 1941, is Pearl Harbor Day.") we almost always automatically include both pieces of information -- city AND state (or city AND country) -- and with dates, both month/day AND year. In contrast, for most other nouns, we don't automatically add that appositive for clarification -- just when we see our listener or reader needs that clarification.

 

 

...except when we write dates like that, we do not use ordinal numbers. We use cardinal numbers: December 7, 1941. We could say "the 7th of December," or "I'll be there on the 7th," but "December 7, 1941, is Pearl Harbor Day."

 

Definitely grammar geek. :D

[J-rap]

Sounds like you got your answer, but yes, this is how I learned it as well.  I've seen it without the comma in recent years though (in professional-type writing) so have wondered if that comma is becoming optional.

 

 

[Denise in IN]

Interesting thread - I learned something new.  Thanks to those who explained it so well!

[Guest]

because it was REALLY tired??

Edited June 22, 2017 by Paradox5