Skip to main content

Conquering the Comma PowerPoint Presentation

OWL logo

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.



Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.


This resource is enhanced by a PowerPoint file. If you have a Microsoft Account, you can view this file with PowerPoint Online.

This presentation is designed to acquaint you or your students with the rules of comma usage, including:

  • placement in compound sentences
  • placement after introductory elements
  • placement with dependent phrases and clauses
  • placement around nonessential elements
  • placement in a series
  • placement with adjectives

This presentation will also cover methods for avoiding a common comma error—the comma splice. The twenty-six slide presentation included here is designed to aid the facilitator in an interactive presentation of the elements of comma usage. This presentation is ideal for the beginning of a composition course, the assignment of a writing project, or as a refresher presentation for grammar usage.