Report Writing: Do You Need a Comma Here?

This post is only offered as a discussion topic only and does not represent legal advice. Officers must refer to the laws in their own State as well as their agency's policies, which can be more restrictive on officers that the law requires.

As an officer, have you ever been typing a report and ask yourself, do I need a comma here? This seems to be a continuous problem for officers, especially newer report writers.

If when writing their report, an officer has a connecting word, and, or, but, for, so, in a sentence, do you need a comma? The answer is .... it depends. To demonstrate this, consider the following two sentences: "We went to the movie. We didn't stay long. If we want to make these two sentences into one, we could write: We went to the movie but didn't stay long." The subject of the sentence is We; the actions of the sentence are went and stay.  Since there is only one subject mentioned in the sentence, there is no comma before the connecting word, but. 

On the other hand, a compound sentence is one sentence with two subjects, even if it is the same subject repeated. With that in mind, another way to write those two sentences as one is: "We went to the movie, but we didn't stay long." This time, the subject/actions are We/Went and We/Stay. This time, there was a comma before the connecting word, but. The only difference was the addition of second subject. So, if you have two subjects in the sentence, there needs to be a comma before the connecting word. But if there is only one subject, you don't add a comma.

This blog topic serves as a summary of our video lesson on this crucial topic. If you're interested in accessing the full video lesson and additional resources, click the link to register for your free 30-day trial.