You can visit all the rules of style you want Jawaan Taylor Jaguars Jersey , 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 Josh Allen Jaguars Jersey , 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 Yannick Ngakoue Jaguars Jersey , 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 subjectverbobject, 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 Leonard Fournette Jaguars Jersey , 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 Taven Bryan Jaguars Jersey , 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 Jalen Ramsey Jaguars Jersey , 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 Telvin Smith Jaguars Jersey , 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.
Michael LaRocca's website at was chosen by WRITER'S DIGEST as one of The 101 Best Websites For Writers in 2001 and 2002. His response was to throw it out and start over again because he's insane. He teaches English at a university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, and publishes the free weekly newsletter WHO MOVED MY RICE? Breakthrough Way to Make Affiliate Money... Existing Right Under Your Nose ;) ECommerce Articles | July 5, 2006 When you sign up for an affiliate program, it usually gives you some links, where you should send the traffic: either a salescopy or some articles. That's it. What it would be like to send your prospects to any blog posts that the affiliate program owner made and get your affiliate checks from it?
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