Dreyer's English - Benjamin Dreyer 2022

Commas
56 assorted things to do (and not to do) with punctuation
The stuff in the front

4.

The series comma is the comma that separates the last two bits in a list of words or phrases before the concluding conjunction “and” or “or” or sometimes even “but,” as in:

apples, pears, oranges, tangerines, tangelos, bananas, and cherries

The “bananas, and” comma. That’s the series comma.

You may know this comma as the Oxford comma—because, we’re told, it’s traditionally favored by the editors at Oxford University Press, a well-respected and well-established publisher of Very Smart People. But as a patriotic American, I’m loath to perpetuate that policy. Or you may be familiar with the term “serial comma,” though for me “serial” evokes “killer,” so no again.

Whatever you want to call it: Use it. I don’t want to belabor the point; neither am I willing to negotiate it.

No sentence has ever been harmed by a series comma, and many a sentence has been improved by one.

5.

Exception to the rule: An ampersand (&) in a series rather than an “and”—this sort of thing tends to turn up in book or film titles, the names of law firms (and other companies that want to invest themselves with the cachet of law firms), and nowhere else, but it’s a thing to know—negates the necessity of a series comma, mostly because the result would be unsightly. Thus, oh, say:

Eats, Shoots & Leaves [a popular book on punctuation by Lynne Truss]

and certainly not

Eats, Shoots, & Leaves

6.

You might well, if you’re relatively sparing with your commas, write

On Friday she went to school.

or

Last week Laurence visited his grandmother.

So long as the commaless rendition is clear and understandable, you’re on safe ground.

The longer the introductory bit, the more likely you are to want/need a comma:

After three days home sick with a stomachache, she returned to school.

On his way back from basketball practice, Laurence visited his grandmother.

7.

But do avoid crashing proper nouns, as in

In June Trump’s personal lawyer spoke to representatives in Moscow.

Lest you want your reader wondering who June Trump is and what precisely got into her attorney.

Or consider a sentence that begins, say, “On arrival at Random House I was informed,” which might set you, if only for a millisecond, to speculating about Random House II and Random House III.

8.

Sometimes a comma makes no sense at all.

Suddenly, he ran from the room.

Makes it all rather less sudden, doesn’t it.

9.

A comma splice is the use of a comma to join two sentences when each can stand on its own—as in:

I don’t know why it’s a problem for you, I just like unicorns.

As a rule you should avoid comma splicing, though exceptions can be and frequently are made when the individual sentences are reasonably short and intimately connected: “I came, I saw, I conquered” or “Your strengths are your weaknesses, your weaknesses are your strengths.” Another exception arises in fiction or fictionlike writing in which such a splice may be effective in linking closely related thoughts or expressing hurried action and even a semicolon—more on the glorious semicolon below—is more pause than is desired.

An example, from Walter Baxter’s undeservedly obscure 1951 novel Look Down in Mercy:

He had never noticed [the sunset] before, it seemed fantastically beautiful.

As comma splices go, this one’s not doing anyone any harm, and there’s no issue here with comprehension, so let’s let it go.

The result of a comma splice is known as a run-on sentence. You may meet a fair number of people who like to aim that term at any old sentence that happens to be long and twisty and made up of a bunch of bits divided by semicolons, dashes, parentheses, and whatever else the writer may have had on hand. Nay. A long sentence is a long sentence, it’s only a run-on sentence when it’s not punctuated in the standard fashion. Like that one just now.

10.

The vocative comma—or the comma of direct address—is the comma separating a bit of speech from the name (or title or other identifier) of the person (or sometimes the thing) being addressed. As commas go, it’s not particularly controversial. No one—at least no one I’d care to associate with—would favor

I’ll meet you in the gym Charlie.

over

I’ll meet you in the gym, Charlie.

Right?

And so it goes with “Good afternoon, Mabel,” “I live to obey, Your Majesty,” “Please don’t throw me in jail, Your Honor,” and “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too.”

And yet—there’s always an “and yet”—you probably frequently run into the likes of

And Dad, here’s another thing.

or

But Mom, you said we could go to the movies.^*1

which one invariably corrects to

And, Dad, here’s another thing.

and

But, Mom, you said we could go to the movies.

Copy editors periodically run into pushback—generally accompanied by a put-out “But my rhythm!”—on that comma, but they should hold firm, and writers should get over themselves. It’s just a comma, and it’s a proper and meaningful comma, and no one’s pausing in midsentence to take a walk around the block.^*2

This is as good a place as any, I suppose, to note that honorifics either attached to names or used in place of them should be capped,^*3 as in the aforementioned

I live to obey, Your Majesty.

and

Please don’t throw me in jail, Your Honor.

Similarly, when one is speaking to one’s mother or father:

I live to obey, Mom.

and

Please don’t throw me in jail, Dad.

But: A passing casual reference, not in direct address, to one’s mom or dad does not require a capital letter.

A bit of copyeditorial controversy tends to pop up when a writer offers something like:

I’m on my way to visit my Aunt Phyllis.

Which many copy editors will attempt to downgrade to:

I’m on my way to visit my aunt Phyllis.

Writers tend to balk at this sort of thing, and I tend to side with them. I myself had an aunt named Phyllis, and so far as I was concerned, her name was Aunt Phyllis. And thus I refer to her, always, as my Aunt Phyllis.^*4

On the other hand, I’d be more than happy to refer to “my grandmother Maude,” because that is who she was, not what she was called.^*5

Note, by the way, that I do not refer to “my grandmother, Maude,” since I had two grandmothers—like everyone else, whether you knew them or not. Though I might well refer to “my maternal grandmother, Maude.” (See “The ’Only’ Comma,” in Section 13, below.)

11.

We’ve all been taught to precede or follow dialogue with a comma in constructions like

Atticus said dryly, “Do not let this inspire you to further glory, Jeremy.”

or

“Keep your temper,” said the Caterpillar.

It should be noted, though, that this rule does not apply when dialogue is preceded or followed by some version of the verb “to be” (“is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” etc.), as in:

Lloyd’s last words were “That tiger looks highly pettable.”

or

“Happy New Year” is a thing you should stop saying after January 8.

In each of these cases, the phrase in question is less dialogue than a noun-in-quote-marks, and thus no comma is called for. If you can replace the words in quotes with “it” or “that” or another pronoun, you don’t need a comma before them.

12.

Will you go to London too?

Will you go to London, too?

Q. When do I use a comma with “too” and when don’t I?

A. Whichever you choose, the other way will look better.

I spent a great many years periodically revisiting my big fat stylebooks in an attempt to get it into my head how to properly do the “too” thing, and the explanations never sank in. In the examples above, does one of them mean “Will you go to London as well as Paris?” and does one of them mean “Will you as well as your mother go to London?” I haven’t the foggiest. So to blazes with it. If you can hear a comma before the “too,” feel free to use it. If you can’t, feel free to not.

13.

THE “ONLY” COMMA

If a writer writes a sentence like

He traveled to Pompeii with his daughter Clara.

a copy editor will usually ask:

His only daughter? If so, add comma.

Thus the comma I choose to refer to—since I am perpetually confused by the grammar terms “restrictive” and “nonrestrictive” and can never remember which is meant to be which—as the “only” comma.

“Only” commas (they travel in pairs, except at the very ends of sentences), are used to set off nouns that are the only one of their kind in the vicinity, as in, say,

Abraham Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert, was born on August 1, 1843.

The logic being that as one can have only one eldest son, his name in this sentence is an interesting, noteworthy, yet inessential piece of information. Thus if I encounter

Abraham Lincoln’s eldest son was born on August 1, 1843.

there can be no question that it’s Robert who is being spoken of, rather than the subsequent Edward or Willie or Tad, whether Robert is named or not.

Conversely, in a sentence lacking the unique modifier “eldest,” one must be told which son is being spoken of, thus:

Lincoln’s son Robert was an eyewitness to the assassination of President Garfield.

Or, say:

George Saunders’s book Lincoln in the Bardo concerns the death of Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie.

Again, it’s crucial, not merely interesting, that we know which of Abraham Lincoln’s sons is being spoken of, and that the son in question is not Robert, Edward, or Tad.

At the other end of the spectrum, then, be careful not to set an “only” comma where there is no only-ness, as in, say:

The Pulitzer Prize—winning novelist, Edith Wharton, was born in New York City.

Because Wharton is merely one of many winners of the Pulitzer, there should be no “only” comma.

14.

The “only” comma rule is also helpful in differentiating between “that” and “which,” if differentiating between “that” and “which” is your bag.

If you’re about to offer a piece of information that’s crucial to your sentence, offer it up without a comma and with a “that”:

Please fetch me the Bible that’s on the table.

Which is to say: Fetch me the Bible that is on the table rather than the Bible that’s under the couch or the Bible that’s poised picturesquely on the window seat.

If you’re offering a piece of information that’s perhaps interesting amplification but might well be deleted without harm, offer it up with a comma and a “which”:

Please fetch me the Bible, which is on the table.

One Bible and one Bible only.

The “that” versus “which” rule is not universally observed, I must note. Some writers find it pushily constricting and choose between the two by ear. I find it helpful and apply it consistently.

15.

What goes up must come down, and that which begins with a comma, if it is an interruption, must also end with one, as in:

Queen Victoria, who by the end of her reign ruled over a good fifth of the world’s population, was the longest-reigning monarch in British history till Elizabeth II surpassed her record in 2015.

It’s that comma after “population” I want you to keep an eye on, because it has a tendency to get forgotten in sentences in which a parenthetical has been stuffed, turducken-like, into the interrupting bit, as in:

Queen Victoria, who by the end of her reign ruled over a good fifth of the world’s population (not all of whom were her own relatives, though it often seemed that way), was the longest-reigning monarch in British history till Elizabeth II surpassed her record in 2015.