The Three Uses of the Comma

Remember that, in general, there are only three uses for the comma:

commas separate things in a series.
Example:
"I ate an apple, an orange, a banana, and a slice of watermelon."
(Note that you do use a comma before the final "and" in the sentence.)
a comma sets off the introductory structure at the beginning of a sentence.
Here is a sentence with an end structure:
i like to spend freely when I go shopping.
Now, for variety, you can move that end structure to the beginning of the sentence. If you do move the end structure, then you need a comma to show "displacement." The sentence looks like this:
"When I go shopping, I like to spend freely."
See the difference?
a comma (with a conjunction) joins two complete sentence (you mustuse a comma and a conjunction). There must be a complete sentence on both sides of the comma+conjunction. For example:
"I went to the store, and I bought a watermelon."
Do you see that ", and"? There is a comma before the "and" because two short sentences are joined together as one. In this next sentence, there is no comma because there is only one sentence:
"I went to the store and bought a watermelon."
In this example, the and doesn't join two sentences, but two verbs.

An important note: somewhere, sometime, somebody probably told you to "put a comma where you pause." Don't do that!

No, no -- do not put a comma where you pause! If you do, then you will almost always be wrong because you are putting speech patterns into writing patterns, and these two patterns often don't fit together. The correct written punctuation mark for the written implied pause is the dash, not the comma.

The comma does not show a pause, it only shows. . .

things in a series;
the introductory structure
two complete sentences linked together as one (only when used with a conjunction, in this formula: comma + conjunction).

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