Don't they drive you nuts?



You can visit all the rules of style you want, and you can read

all the books and articles you want. You'll still be confused.

You'll see inconsistency. You'll see experts who don't agree

with each other. And, you'll pull out your hair. Unless you're

me, since my hair's falling out all by itself. I think it'd do

that even if I weren't an editor hunting down errant commas.

Well, folks, here are some rules. A bare minimum. Internalize

these and ignore everybody else.

(1) Never put a comma between a subject and a verb. It's always

wrong. The dog, barked. What is that? Idiocy. Read it aloud,

and pause at the comma. Don't you feel stupid?

(2) If you want to separate a clause, put a comma on both sides

of it. Otherwise, no commas at all. "The dog, who held a bone

in his mouth, ran to the porch." See how there's a comma on

both sides? That's because you could skip that whole clause

entirely and it'd still be a complete sentence. "The dog ran to

the porch."

If I delete the first comma, I have to delete the second one.

You decide which looks best, two commas or none. But, one comma

doesn't work. Try deleting either one and reading the result

aloud, remembering to pause at the comma. It's a wreck, isn't

it? You don't talk like that, so don't write like that.

(3) "He saw the cat, the cat was on the couch." This is not a

good sentence. It's two sentences. The one before the comma has

subject/verb/object, and so does the one after the comma.

Run-ons like that can emphasize the run-on nature of a

character's words or thoughts, but use the device sparingly.

It's okay to break a rule, as long as you know what it is and

why you're breaking it.

But in the example above, it'd be best to make them two

sentences. If you find you just can't do it, consider a

semicolon. Don't believe anyone who says semicolons aren't

allowed in fiction. I wouldn't use one in the sample sentence,

but I've used them in other sentences I've written. Sparingly.

But for something as lame as a sentence about a cat on a couch,

it's best to follow the rules exactly and make that two sentences.

Do you really think your reader's gonna pop off for a beer or a

toilet break between them and lose his place? As long as they're

in the same paragraph, they'll be read together.

(4) And finally, THE rule. It works for narrative and it works

for dialogue. Read what you've written aloud. Wherever you

would pause for breath, whack in a comma. Because, you have

internalized the rules. You've been speaking English all your

life. But as an aspiring writer, you've been so busy trying to

learn "the rules" that you've forgotten the rule you've known

all along. And you DO know it.

If you'd like, you can look over some sentences in the

preceding paragraphs. You'll note some commas where they're not

strictly necessary. Often, it's where I begin a sentence with a

conjunction, also an alleged no-no. But that device can be used

sparingly to emphasize a point. And when I do that, sometimes I

whip in a comma for extra emphasis. A comma is a pause. That's

what you should note if you indulge in this exercise. I'm

pausing for emphasis. Read my sentences aloud. Pause at every

comma. The rhythm works. It's how I talk, and you won't be all

freaked out and confused as you listen because I paused in

funny places.

Speaking as an editor, I run into a lot of writers who have

problems with commas. Heck, speaking as someone who likes to

read books and newspapers and magazines, I see commas where

they shouldn't be, or missing commas where they should be. It's

because we're trying to be too fancy, drifting dangerously far

from the "write what you know" mantra because we think we're

stupid.

We're not stupid. As Sean Connery noted in FINDING FORRESTER,

critics spend a day destroying what they couldn't create in a

lifetime. That's also what I think of people who want us to

memorize dozens of silly rules about commas. They're pauses.

Nothing more, nothing less. Pause where you want to pause, not

where you think someone else thinks you're supposed to pause.

Lemme remind you what writing is. Telepathy. I'm in China and

you probably aren't, and you're reading this many months after

I wrote it, but you know what I'm thinking. Stray commas would

be a barrier to that. Good writers don't like barriers.

Just remember that a comma is a pause, and pause wherever you

think you should. Blow off the rules -- there are too many and

they just keep changing -- and trust your gut. If you do that,

I think you'll find that when you seek out publication, and

find yourself working with an editor, you'll hear very little

about your commas.