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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Author: John Rogers
I have thought of myself as a writer for most of my adult life. In 2011, I became a fiction writer full time. I studied creative writing as an English major in college. Then came family and career. I worked in finance and biotech and did a wonderful stint in Vienna. Now, I have the opportunity to use those experiences as the substrate for my stories. My first novel takes on the world of Big Data and the very timely issue of cyber war. The second uses the manipulation of financial derivatives as impetus for attempted murder during a trip from Vienna to Budapest on the Danube.
I have taken writing instruction at the Cape Cod Writers Conference and from The Loft in Minneapolis. I am finding writers’ groups to be very helpful as concept editors, as well as practical advice from the published authors. I am in three such groups. I have taken writing instruction at the Cape Cod Writers Conference and from The Loft in Minneapolis.
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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.
http://www.janiceheck.wordpress.com
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!