I enjoy cooking. I’m not really spectacular at it — my roux always seems a little pasty and my soups too often turn a bit too soupy. But I’m pretty good with spices. Which isn’t surprising; I got a lot of practice using commas.
Learning to use commas is like learning to use spices. Add too many, and they can utterly destroy the flavor of your content. Read an essay with too many commas in it, and you’ll be tasting commas for the rest of the day. And whenever you see one, you’ll recoil, even if it’s used properly.
But if you don’t use enough commas, your writing will be a flavorless, incomprehensible mush, a bizarre melange of non-flavors that intrude on each other like chicken gravy spilling over the TV-dinner-tray barrier into the chocolate cake compartment. And that’s just unpleasant.
(Another thing you never want to do when writing is use half-assed mixed metaphors that you’ll later have to apologize for. But that’s another post.)
In my travels across the Internet, I’ve noticed that most writers generally tend to take the same approach to using commas that I used for talking to girls in college:
If I don’t do it, then I can’t screw it up.
The same way I avoided Alicia Wrobleski, most bloggers avoid using too many commas, figuring that not using a comma is better than misusing a comma. Of course, this is nonsense. Not doing something is usually worse than trying and failing. And just as the bedpost in room 311 of Sherwood Hall could have had a lot more notches in it if I had just put forth the effort, so your writing can flow effortlessly through your readers’ eyeballs into the Broca regions of their brains.
So: If you only remember one thing about commas for the rest of your life, remember this: A comma is a breath. If you’re a long-winded writer, commas are some of the best gifts you can give to your readers.
Consider this sentence from an advance review of The Dark Knight, posted on one of the Web’s more popular movie sites:
I personally am not a fan of the Joker and find him often grating and overused foil for Batman but there’s no denying his place in history and to many people the first film’s Achilles Heel was the lack of the signature Batman villain.
There’s actually a lot wrong with this sentence (though I agree with the sentiment it expresses). The word “personally” as used here is unnecessary, and really, this whole thing should be broken down into two or more sentences. But let’s see what we can’t fix with commas:
I personally am not a fan of the Joker, and find him often grating and overused foil for Batman, but there’s no denying his place in history, and to many people the first film’s Achilles Heel was the lack of the signature Batman villain.
It’s still not perfect, but see how much simpler a few commas made your reading experience? Commas aid in comprehension in ways that are subtle and subconscious to many of us.
Here’s another example — one that’s more easily fixed — from a popular political site. Here the writer is reacting to a column on marriage in the New York Times:
I just think it is unrealistic and feeds into those crazy ideals we have to internalize and then adds more pressure on our relationships.
One of the problems with failing to use commas when offering your opinion is that it’s easy to come off with a lecturing tone. Again, there’s plenty wrong with this sentence, but it can be patched up pretty well with the addition of a few commas:
I just think it is unrealistic, and feeds into those crazy ideals we have to internalize, and then adds more pressure on our relationships.
But you didn’t come here for examples. That’s not where the hot, wet grammatical action is. You came here for rules.
So, with the caveat that the rules of grammar are really more like guidelines, I offer a few simple rules (um, or guidelines) for using commas.
1. Commas go before conjunctions introducing independent clauses. Conjunctions are words like and, but, or and yet. Independent clauses are sentence clauses with a subject and verb (think of them as clauses that could stand as complete sentences if need be). Keeping an independent clause separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma helps the reader know when he’s moving on to a new thought. The sentence “Alicia Wrobleski was a total babe, and I’m still kicking myself for never having the nerve to talk to her” is a good example of how to use a comma to separate clauses.
2. Never use a comma when a semicolon will do. Don’t simply use commas to separate two independent clauses; doing so betrays a lack of wordsmithing acumen. (See what I just did there?)
3. The rules for lists aren’t as hard and fast as you think. Some people will use commas throughout a list, as in “apples, oranges, grapes, and bananas.” Others will eschew that ultimate comma, opting to write “apples, oranges, grapes and bananas.” Either way is correct, so don’t sweat it.
4. Use commas to separate nonessential elements of sentences. What constitutes a nonessential element may be a bit hazy at times, so try to think of this as one of those times when you’re giving your reader a chance to take a breath. Think about this sentence:
Barack Obama, who is originally from Hawaii, is running for president.
Now imagine it without commas. Pretty hard to read that way, isn’t it?
5. Don’t use commas after conjunctions. Look at every use of the words and, but, nor and or (as well as subordinating conjunctions like although and because) — how would they look with a comma stuck after them. Pretty bad, that’s how.
I know I’m going to get a lot of arguments from big-money SEO types about how this kind of stuff doesn’t matter if it doesn’t affect your clickthrough rate or your pagerank. And to be honest, the rules of good grammar are malleable not always trustworthy. But trust me: This stuff is important. How you sound to others is important.
It probably would have impressed Alicia Wrobleski. At least, I like to think so.
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