I notice — more and more frequently, in these dark times we live in — that people do not (or are not sure how to) use commas. When your imagination is in free-flow like whitewater rapids full of alphabet soup, of course you’re going to miss a few punctuation and spelling whatchamacallits. You can’t allow the rules of grammar to hinder the story, so write your first draft any way you feel comfortable doing so — spell it phonetically, even — but then always edit your stuff from the beginning of its second draft onwards.
Some publishers like to omit commas wherever possible, as it saves a bit of extra printing costs, or perhaps because it’s easier on the eyes when reading on a screen. Some use the Oxford comma, and some don’t. In any case, commas help to split sentences into manageable chunks (or clauses) and are extremely useful when you’re reading things out loud. Sometimes, commas give a sentence a different meaning.
So, here is a short primer on how to comma (or not):
- Only use a comma before words like “and,” “before,” and “but,” if the clauses it separates are independent (i.e. they both have a subject and a verb and can be seen as a whole or complete thought). For example:
• I could go down to the woods today, but I saw a pair of marauding baboons.
• Swans mate for life, and penguins do not tap dance.
(Caveat: If the sentence is rather short, you can leave out the comma. No one will run after you with a dirty great stick. Honest.)
2. If you’re writing a list, put commas between the items / nouns, then a comma before “and.” The comma before “and” is the Oxford comma. (I don’t know why it comes from Oxford, just roll with it.) For example:
• I went to the woods today and I brought home a brace of pigeons, a rusty bath, and a dead body.
• Swans like to float on water, peck things, and break people’s arms.
3. Use a comma after an introductory clause, whether it be denoting time or location, to let the reader know that the main part of the sentence is going to begin:
• When out walking in the woods, always remember to avoid treading on corpses.
• Inside the rollercoaster, keep your hands inside the ride at all times.
4. Bookend a non-essential clause with commas if it is in the middle of a sentence:
• The green-skinned zombie, who was riddled with acne, chomped on Mrs Lawson’s blue-rinsed perm.
• The long neck of the swan, which is flexible and can almost tie itself in knots, is ironically as white as innocence.
5. Use a comma if using a noun that “renames” another noun, if it doesn’t affect the sentence’s meaning:
• Trees, nature’s wooden hands, have gnarly roots convenient for tripping over.
• Swans and geese, Satan’s right-hand wingmen, tend to hiss like aggravated cats.
6. If you are naming or addressing a person by name, put a comma before or after the name:
• I don’t think you should have brought that body home from the woods, Quentin.
• John, what did I tell you about not provoking the feathered descendants of dinosaurs?
7. Use a comma after “said” when writing dialogue, and put a comma at the end of what the character is saying if using a dialogue tag halfway through the sentence, e.g.:
• Quentin said, “Don’t you sass me.”
• “Honk,” the swan suggested. “Honk, honk.”
8. Use commas with dates, addresses, titles, and numbers:
• On April the 6th, 2022, I sat down and wrote a long-ass article about little flick-marks on paper.
• Quentin Fruitloop, BsC, phD, Hons., is magnetic to thunder and lightning.
• I was born at 22, Nightmare Avenue, Terror Town, Yaxley.
• There are 65,000 tiny people squatting in John’s brain-pan.
Well, I hope that comes in useful for somebody. It was nice to write my own examples of these kinds of things, anyhoo.
Nightwalks 