My friend Sam Westreich, a fine writer, asked about a rule for punctuation, says, “Put in a comma when your brain runs out of breath.” Now, if we had been given rules like that in fifth grade, we’d all be grammarians!
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words and music, and the making of them
I love this. SO true!
Well, yes. Or we’d have sentences with forty-seven commas, depending on how well-conditioned our brain is. 😉
This was funny. I may be the comma king.
What, you may, well, you may well ask, is wrong, in and of itself, with, as it were, loads of commas? Yes, it could get tedious. And sentences would be as awful as that which I just wrote and, indeed, I am writing now. Wouldn’t it be entertaining though? No, no really. But I do love commas when used well. ^_^
Pity the poor non-fluent reader who stops for breath on every other word, then writes the same way. This rule may work for some but not others. I love commas, so I like to use the rules. After all, they are not really that hard.
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Wow, I’m quoted on the Internet! Oh man, I feel famous. And while I definitely accept that commas can be overused, I find that they are nearly always underused, not overused. In the writing of others, I see far more run-on sentences without commas than sentences that suffer a plague of commas.
Sam, I love the phrase. Great rule of thumb, and a further reason ALWAYS to read your material out loud. Of course, Janice is right. For those with mental emphysema, the rule could be dangerous!