Comma Confusion

It's amazing, isn't it? As soon as you know that you are being assessed on something, it throws up a massive question mark in your mind as to whether you actually know what you think you know.

Take the pre-course assessment essay I have to write to get onto the copywriting course I chose here. Never have I doubted my use of common punctuation quite so much!

And what was the source of my little punctu-breakdown?

Why, it was the lowly comma of all things.

I found myself reading and re-reading, deleting and re-adding the little blighters until my page resembled a family of ants doing a conga through an ink pad.

So I thought for my own benefit, as well as for anyone else who might suddenly and inexplicably have lost all comma-nd of simple punctuation, that I would recap on the uses of this, the full stop's taller and less abrupt sibling.

When proofreading any sentence you’re unsure about, ask yourself the following questions:

As examples, I turn to things I have found myself saying to my toddler this week.

1. Am I displaying a list or series in my sentence?

E.g.,  “Would you like a blue beaker, a red beaker or a green beaker?” (or any other sodding beaker – JUST PICK ONE!)

Oh, but hang on. Should there be a comma after the ‘red beaker’, the penultimate item in the list?

The answer is technically yes, but often people don’t. Read the sentence out loud and if you think it makes sense it probably does, if you feel it would benefit from the extra pause put a comma in, it will not be wrong.

There will be times when this last comma is vital to the meaning of your sentence so you must be prepared to include it if necessary, but the main thing is consistency.

(Useless fact – this final comma, if used, is know as a serial comma or Oxford comma)

2. Is there a conjunction in my sentence?

For the non-grammar geeks amongst us that is a joiny bit. Usually 'and', 'but', 'so' and 'or', but could also be 'nor' and 'for'.

These words are often used to join two parts of your sentence that could make sense individually. 

Put the comma just before the conjunction.

E.g., “You can have the blueberries, but I wont let you shove them up your nose!”

3. Is there a bit in my sentence that could be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence?  

These are known as parenthetical elements (parentheses are brackets)

If you read the sentence out loud, you should be able to work out the bits that are unnecessary. An example of this could be a bit of your sentence that clarifies the part immediately before it,

E.g.,  “Louis, the cat, doesn’t really like it when you poke him in the eye.”

‘The cat’ could be removed from the sentence without materially affecting its meaning, but including it makes it a little clearer.

The confusion comes, in my mind, when trying to combine these last 2 ‘rules’.

E.g., “We can go out for a walk, but, if I can help it, I wont let you jump in all the muddy puddles.”

This sentence has a conjunction (the ‘but’) and an aside or parenthetical element (the ‘if I can help it’)

In this example, if you were following both rules you would put a comma before the ‘but’ and before and after ‘if I can help it’. However, if you read this out loud the sentence becomes stilted and doesn’t flow.

Therefore, where you have what I like to call a ‘comma collision’ - too many commas in the same place, you need to rethink it - I tend to remove the middle one and see how it looks then – say it to yourself in the mirror and you will feel and hear the difference.

I.e., “We can go out for a walk, but if I can help it, I wont let you jump in all the muddy puddles.”

4. Is there an introductory bit in my sentence?

Often you will find yourself writing a sentence where the first part is used to set the scene. This should be set off with a comma.

E.g., “Although I thought I had hidden the tupperware, you seem to have found it and tipped it all over the kitchen floor again.”

You can also approach it by looking at whether the first part of your sentence affects the whole of the rest of the sentence – if it does it will need a comma after it.

If the beginning bit is short you may get away without this comma, but it would not be wrong to add it if in doubt.

5. Am I describing something in my sentence?

If there is a noun (thing) preceded by 2 or more adjectives (describing words) you will probably need a comma between the adjectives. Ask yourself whether you could put an 'and' or 'but' in between the words. If you could, then you will need a comma. It is rare that a comma is not required.

E.g., 
Toddler: “Uh-oh. Wet foot.”

Me: “You appear to have just dropped a full beaker of milk on my nice, clean floor.

‘Floor’ is the noun, and ‘nice’ and ‘clean’ are descriptors of the floor. I could have said nice and clean (obviously pre-milk incident, not post!), therefore it can be replaced with a comma.

It is very easy to just stick excess commas in willy-nilly.  After all, even the great Oscar Wilde was quoted as saying, “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest taking it out.”

RIght at this moment I know exactly how he feels.

There are some specific rules, which should be followed consistently, but the moral seems to be to read your text out loud and if you feel that a pause is needed to improve the rhythm and flow of your sentence, or to ensure that the reader reads it as you would wish, then a comma is unlikely to be out of place!

As for whether I correctly used the comma throughout my pre-course assessment essay - well that remains to be seen!

So, how many ‘deliberate’ comma-catastrophes can you spot in this post?

Check back to follow my progress...