A bit of punctuation: the comma
Let’s hear it for the comma. A deceptively simple mark, commas are a source of confusion and contention. Lynn Truss, in her bestseller, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, notes that punctuation in general, and commas in particular, serve two different purposes:
- To illuminate the grammar of a sentence
- To point up — rather in the manner of musical notation — such literary qualities as rhythm, direction, pitch, tone and flow
This is why grown men have knock-down fights over the comma in editorial offices: because these two roles of punctuation sometimes collide head-on — indeed, where the comma is concerned, they do it all the time.
Because of these two very different purposes, the "rules" governing the use of commas tend to get muddled up. Time to introduce a bit of clarity, eh?
The most straightforward purpose of commas is to divide up items in a list.
The children’s choir was made up of first, second, third, and fourth graders.
Without the comma, we’d have to insert the word and or or between the items in the list to keep its meaning from being jumbled. But if we said it that way, we’d sound a bit silly: "The children’s choir was made up of first and second and third and fourth graders."
Remember that a list isn’t always a list of things; it can be a list of adjectives. From today’s local newspaper comes an article about using chili on steaks:
Let’s sit down to something that is hearty, bursting with flavor, but low in fat.
The comma gives us a cue that the adjective hearty stands on its own; it doesn’t work in conjunction with bursting with flavor. You could easily write this as "hearty and bursting with flavor." In other cases, a string of adjectives works together, and a comma would change the meaning. From the same article, the phrase beef tenderloin steaks would look silly with commas between the adjectives, because the steaks are not beef and tenderloin. Beef tenderloin works as a unit.
Roy Jacobsen
I realize now that I should have provided a link to my post on serial commas, so here it is.
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Reader Comments (4)
Thanks, it's fixed now.
Its/it's is something that I constantly wrestle with. I know the difference; heck, I wrote about it here: http://rmjacobsen.squarespace.com/notebook/2005/9/27/its-is-not-it-is-and-other-non-equivalencies.html. But when I'm typing in a hurry, I'm still quite likely to let the wrong one slip past my radar. I'm not sure whether to blame it on my subconscious or faulty muscle-memory. All I know is that I use the wrong one often enough to really make me squirm.
"They awarded ribbons for first, second, third, and fourth place."
"They awarded ribbons for first, second, third and fourth place."
I always go with the first example, placing a comma between each item on the list. It's the way I was taught and a habit I'll never break, even if under duress from a thousand screaming rabid monkeys.
Is there a definitive answer to this one, or is it one of those either-or things?
I wrote about my preference in serial commas a while back, and should have provided a link; I've done so now.