Last week at my critique group meeting we had a new member,
a lady who has published several novels and some how-to books on writing. She
also works as an editor. She had some interesting input on the
manuscript of
one of our members.
I paraphrase her:
“My agent told me to eliminate three quarters of the commas in my writing. Too many commas slow things down.”
Once again the national disease of attention deficit disorder surfaces its ugly head, this time in the use of the comma. We have to keep things moving so the reader will not lose interest, even at the expense of a comma or two.
This is fine with me because, and I am being honest here, the comma is my weak spot. Sure, I know the difference between “Let’s eat, Grandma,” and “Let’s eat Grandma.” In the second, you are about to go Hannibal Lecter on your grandmother. There are other places, though, where its use is more precarious.
Case in point, the Oxford comma. As described in Wikipedia (and I am including the links, boldfaces and italics as they appear in Wikipedia):
In punctuation, a serial comma (also called Oxford comma and Harvard comma) is a comma placed immediately before the coordinating conjunction (usually and, or, or nor) in a series of three or more terms. For example, a list of three countries might be punctuated either as "Portugal, Spain, and France" (with the serial comma), or as "Portugal, Spain and France" (without the serial comma).[1][2][3]
Opinions among writers and editors differ on whether to use the serial comma. In American English, a majority of style guides prescribe use of the serial comma, including The Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White's Elements of Style,[4] and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual. The Associated Press Stylebook for journalistic writing advises against it. It is used less often in British English,[5] but some British style guides recommend it, including the Oxford University Press's style manual[6] and Fowler's Modern English Usage. Some writers of British English use it only where necessary to avoid ambiguity.[7]
The Oxford comma is way too anal for my liking.
I point to a column by Ben Yagoda last year in the New York Times about the comma. Yagoda takes the comma to task in its various applications, including the Oxford comma, how it appears in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and the rigidity with which it is used in the New Yorker Magazine. Yagoda addresses the issue best when he says, “Maybe more than any other element of writing, punctuation combines rules with issues of sound, preference and personal style.”
In some ways, if I read this correctly, the comma is a slave to fashion.
Which leads me to where I am. I increasingly find myself in the minimalist school of writing. Anything that takes away from the words on the paper must be scrutinized, and that goes for the comma, too. I’m not quite there with Cormac McCarthy, who has pages of dialog with no quotation marks (McCarthy makes it work, and in a wonderful way) but I often find myself rewriting a sentence to avoid the comma. It’s too damn much distraction.
There are times when a comma is necessary (as in “Let’s eat Grandma”), but when in doubt, I vote to edit it out.
See ya’ later.
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