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General: Where have all the commas gone?

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      CommentAuthorSMARTALIENQT
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2009 edited
     

    Sung to the tune of “Where have all the flowers gone?” (Movie, lyrics)

    Where have all the commas gone? (Long time passing)
    (I wanna know) Where have all the commas gone
    Long, long time ago
    Where have all the commas gone?
    Young girls missed them, every one.

    When will they ever learn?
    When will they ever learn?

  2.  
    Bravo! I <3

    Although I more often than not see instances of comma overuse than underuse. Commas are for clauses*-- not for pauses...
    *although technically they generally only work with a dependent clause or phrase, and even then, only in certain situations.
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      CommentAuthorMoldorm
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2009
     

    Comma overuse is very annoying, especially when the culprits are newspapers, widely-read magazines and other publications whose producers should really know better.

  4.  

    Yes, I, for instance, really hate,... comma over use.

  5.  
    Oooh, comma/ellipses combination, you hurt me so!
    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2009
     

    Waht,; do u Mean commas r bad/? :O LOLOL j/k

    Yes, over-usage seems more common to me than under-usage. I’m also a firm advocate of hyphen-usage in class-room and home-work. Em-dashes (and also brackets [including square {but not those squiggly <or indeed, angle>} brackets] ) are good for parenthetical matter—-sub-clauses that aren’t necessary to the main sentence and are usually tangential—-and breaking paragraphs up visually on the page; but only when used correctly are they worthwhile.

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      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2009
     

    Misuse of commas drives me crazy. To look at my life, you’d say I’m the most disorganized person in existence- my desk is a mass of unsorted papers, my room is trashed most of the time, etc. But I actually like order a lot. My files on the computer are religiously organized and subdivided neatly so everything is sorted nicely. I’ve done a bit of computer coding, and I have an extremely particular system of whitespace and indentation, or else the code just looks messy. It’s the same with commas. If punctuation—not just commas, but semicolons, em-dashes, colons, parentheses and so on—is used correctly, a block of text goes from incomprehensible to easy to read. Punctuation helps guide your eyes through text, and if you misuse it, you will only make your writing difficult to read and make me hate you for life. I will send assassins after you.

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      CommentAuthorMoldorm
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2009
     

    Can I borrow some of those assassins? A columnist at the Times deserves your retribution.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2009
     

    Just call 1-800-99R-IVER.

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      CommentAuthorJeni
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2009
     

    I had to get a friend to proofread every essay I wrote because I insist on having sordid love affairs with commas.

    But the sex is great!

  11.  

  12.  

    I insist on having sordid love affairs with commas.

    Yes; I used to do that with semicolons; needless to say, I had about 5 in every sentence; I don’t know which is worse; misuse of semicolons, or misuse of commas; I’m thinking semicolons.

    ;P

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      CommentAuthorMoldorm
    • CommentTimeJul 24th 2009
     

    But they’re so sexy!

  14.  

    I use semicolons more than the average person.

    But I don’t go overboard.

  15.  

    I seriously hate misuse of commas. And I tend to err on the side with more commas than the side with fewer. It makes the work more readable for me.

    And, like Dr Alligator, I am not average.

    But JKR’s use of commas seriously annoys me.

  16.  

    I think I overuse commas as well. Oops

    •  
      CommentAuthorElanor
    • CommentTimeAug 1st 2009
     

    I have a bad habit of constructing these paragraph-long sentences with commas and semicolons. They’re perfectly grammatical, and aren’t run-ons but they’re…looong.

  18.  

    Hello, this, is, Dan, Locke, how, are, you, today?

  19.  

    We’re writing in English, Dan, not German.

  20.  

    Second stanza:

    Where have all the young girls gone? (Long time passing)
    (I wanna know) Where have all the young girls gone
    Long, long time ago
    Where have all the young girls gone?
    Fell for Edward, every one.

    When will they ever learn?
    When will they ever learn?

    •  
      CommentAuthorMoldorm
    • CommentTimeAug 2nd 2009
     

    “I have a bad habit of constructing these paragraph-long sentences with commas and semicolons. They’re perfectly grammatical, and aren’t run-ons but they’re…looong.”

    I used to do this all the time, especially in school essays.

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