Thank you, Roberta, for exposing the overuse of commas. I find them in my editing work, too. I love the image of Comma Girl with a bowl of commas on her desk!
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May 18, 2009
I’ve worked with many writers with a weak grasp of the rules of punctuation, but one who stands out is the woman I think of as Comma Girl. I’m guessing that at some point she learned the importance of commas, and so ever since has kept a bowl of them on her desk.
Then, when she finishes writing something, she tosses a handful at the screen. Wherever they land, they stick.
How else explain a sentence like this: “The, man left the house.” There’s no series of things to connect, no need to link clauses and you certainly don’t need a pause in the sentence.
Sometimes the sentence was “The man, left the house.” Equally incomprehensible.
We had one brief conversation about this, in which she was surprised to hear that I was removing these commas. After that, I just removed them and kept my mouth shut. But I wonder what she’d do with a bowl of semi-colons.