Both the SAT and ACT exams test student knowledge about whether a comma should be placed between introductory information and the sentence’s independent clause. Introductory information can include phrases or dependent clauses that come before a sentence’s independent clause.
Sometimes students will be presented with compound introductory phrases/clauses. In these sentences, be careful to determine where the introductory information ends as it may contain a conjunction like “and.”
In addition, the SAT and ACT exams try to distract students by including answers choices with the wrong punctuation mark between the introductory information and the independent clause and/or incorrectly adding a conjunction.
If you need more practice with comma and other punctuation questions, use the released tests provided by the College Board and ACT or practice online with exam-like questions at websites like UWorld.