13th May 2008
Comma Sutra
[via Shelftalker]
Someone once told me that among writers, there are those who underuse and those who overuse the comma. I am in the latter camp. That there are precise rules to govern comma use is a surprise to some — many liberal comma users like myself are more interested in the pace of their piece than adherence to standards.
According to Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, as quoted in Wikipedia:
A passage peppered with commas — which in the past would have indicated painstaking and authoritative editorial attention — smacks simply of no backbone. People who put in all the commas betray themselves as moral weaklings with empty lives and out-of-date reference books.
While it would be easy to feel offended by this, I am instead encouraged to do things my own way. Strange quote for a book subtitled, “The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.”
Also from Wikipedia — commas have history:
The comma was one of the first punctuation marks. In the 3rd century BC, Aristophanes of Byzantium invented a system of single dots (distinctiones) that separated verses (colometry) and indicated the amount of breath needed to complete each fragment of text when reading aloud (not to comply with rules of grammar, which were not applied to punctuation marks until much later). The different lengths were signified by a dot at the bottom, middle, or top of the line. For a short passage (a komma), a media distinctio dot was placed mid-level ( · ). This is the origin of the concept of a comma, though the name came to be used for the mark itself instead of the clause it separated.
The mark used today is descended from a diagonal slash, or virgula suspensiva ( / ), used from the 13th to 17th centuries to represent a pause, notably by Aldus Manutius. In the 16th century, the virgule dropped to the bottom of the line and curved, turning into the shape used today ( , ).
Do you think people would like the comma better if it were called a virgule?
According to A Short History of the Comma:
Organized religion, specifically Christianity, played an early role in the development of more formal rules for the use of punctuation. St. Augustine was aghast at the idea that Bible passages might be read incorrectly, and he argued that the placement of punctuation must be in accordance with Church doctrine.
Irish scribes and medieval monks on the European continent also contributed to the development of punctuation. But it was not until the invention of the printing press that punctuation marks became regularized both in their appearance and in their usage….
As you can see, the concept of the comma has changed over time and will, no doubt, continue to change. But the long-term trend has been toward greater regularization in developing and applying the rules as well as toward a reduction in the comma’s frequency of use. Still the comma remains the most frequently used punctuation mark—and undoubtedly the most frequently misused.
The timing of these two origin stories is off, but whatever the chronology, the comma, like most punctuation, is meant to translate written word into spoken. It is not the enemy.
Embrace the comma.
Slow down, breathe, that’s it, nice and easy….
Commas are sexy.
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