In which of the following sentences do you find a comma or commas used correctly?
A. After a fire at their home, Carlie and her mother rented a house in Glendale,
Arizona from November 14, 2007 to January 28, 2008.
B. William of Orange, arrived in England in 1688, to claim the English throne from
James II.
C. Claire’s plum pudding was mainly distinctive, for its absence of plums.
D. Christopher Wren, a contemporary of Isaac Newton and John Locke, was the
architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
A and D.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/02/
The commas in A are correctly used, but there's a comma missing. There also needs to be a comma AFTER "Arizona."
The commas in D are correct -- before and after an appositive phrase.
The sentence that correctly uses a comma or commas is:
D. Christopher Wren, a contemporary of Isaac Newton and John Locke, was the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
To determine which sentence(s) use commas correctly, let's analyze each sentence:
A. After a fire at their home, Carlie and her mother rented a house in Glendale, Arizona from November 14, 2007 to January 28, 2008.
This sentence uses commas correctly. The comma after "Glendale" separates the city from the state, and the comma after "2007" separates the year from the timeframe.
B. William of Orange, arrived in England in 1688, to claim the English throne from James II.
This sentence does not use commas correctly. The comma after "Orange" should be removed because it separates the subject "William of Orange" from the verb "arrived." Also, there should be a comma before "to claim" to separate the introductory phrase "In 1688" from the rest of the sentence.
C. Claire’s plum pudding was mainly distinctive, for its absence of plums.
This sentence uses a comma correctly. The comma after "distinctive" separates the introductory phrase "for its absence of plums" from the main clause.
D. Christopher Wren, a contemporary of Isaac Newton and John Locke, was the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
This sentence uses commas correctly. The commas after "Wren" and "Locke" set off the nonessential phrase "a contemporary of Isaac Newton and John Locke" from the rest of the sentence.
Therefore, the correct answer is A and D.