Ielts writing tip

[Scotty]

Hi,

 

I have been studying up for my IELTS through the use of online material that I have discovered through GOOGLE. There is one thing that has been annoying me and this is due to the majority of the material being written by Americans. Some people will already have guessed what this is but I just want to point this out for people whose English writing skills are not as strong. (This includes me - I am a numbers person.)

 

 

Words like and, or, and but are known as conjunctions. (There are other conjunctions, but these three are by far the most common.)

 

 

The female applicant must be able to tell jokes, sing and dance. (UK)

 

The female applicant must be able to tell jokes, sing, and dance. (US)

 

 

(The conjunction and is not joining two independent clauses in this example. Therefore, a comma is NOT required after sing if you're following UK conventions. In the US then a comma would be expected after sing.)

 

 

This is what I call comma-itis.

[gar374]

I noticed the americanisms too, so I just gave up studying. You've gone far more in depth than I ever did, but looking at the US sentence with the extra comma just looks wrong to me. I was taught to use commas until the last item, then an and.

[Vijay Kumar P]

Even in schools in India, no comma before and is been taught. But that's correct though. IELTS writing assessment won't be that deep I suppose.