The Secret of Commas
Do
you see those musical notes in the drawing above? Goofy Guy is whispering
music notation.
And you are familiar with the notation
for a musical rest,
on a page of sheet music, yes? There are quarter rests
and half rests
and full rests--no
sound, total silence smack in the middle of the piece where the mark is,
lasting for an invisible beat or two (depending on the time signature).
Ok, here's the big secret:
First of all, you need to internalize
the fact that a comma is just a notation on the page that represents a
brief pause in the reading. (beat, beat...)
Whereas a period represents a longer pause, and a fresher start.
Below, read the word 'beat' out loud, in order to represent orally the moments of silence that a comma and a period stand for. The sentence and the fragment come from the paragraph just above:
Out loud, now:
First of all
,
you need to internalize the fact that a comma is a just a notation on the
page that
(beat)
represents a brief pause in the
reading .
Whereas a period represents a longer pause ,
and a
(beat, beat)
(beat)
fresher start .
(Beat, beat, take a
breath and: ) Below
,
(beat)
read the word 'beat'...and
so on.
We could use a lot of things to
represent this (meaningful) pause in the reading of a sentence. If you
play the flute, for example, you'll find in the beginner's books that they
use a raised comma to mark where you should take a breath:
,
,
,
Twee twa
dee tee twee twee toooooo
teka tee teeka tee ta tee ta ta teee (whew!)
Or, we could use something handy
on the keyboard like, say, s/ash
/ines.
Read aloud the comma and the period we used in the example above//out
loud//and again now in
the following excerpts: ////
First of all //you
need to internalize the fact that a comma is a just a notation on the page
that represents a brief pause in the reading ////
Whereas a period represents a longer pause
//
and a fresher start /////
The secret of the comma is that
it's all just a matter of sound and silence notation. Commas are writers'
and printers' marks telling the reader how best to read the text, sometimes
for the sake of clarity, sometimes for niceties of meaning.
Onceuponatimeyouknowtheydidntputspacesbetweenthewordsmuchlesscommasforpauses.
ANDACTUALLYTHOUGHIDONTKNOWIFITSANYWORSETHEYWROTEALLINCAPITALLETTERS
Well, do we have any other marks
like this, that aren't sounds but nonetheless affect the voice and the
meaning? Yes, we do.
The ?
, as you know, is another mark telling you to do something with your voice:
it says, Make your voice go up at the end here, does it not ?
And the !
is like the judge's gavel--pow !
[Generally, watch out for the ! in your writing. One good piece of advice
is to use the exclamation point only when the word or line itself is stronger
than the mark,
like WHACKO!
]
Final exam time.
Figure out how to fill out
the blue book or pick one
[Art: blue book cover]
up off the floor somewhere,
put down a pseudonym and
a bogus SS#, and answer the
following question in one minute.
If you finish early, go right on.
The Question: If the !
and the ?
both (purely
by convention) cause voice changes
in the reader,
what voice change could the ,
be said to cause?
Helps:
1) , =
comma
2) Think of the Paul Simon song, about
the
sounds of ____________ .
I know I promised no RULES, but if you'd like some help from yourself in your everyday punctuation, READ THE BLOODY THING ALOUD! Where you find yourself pausing/// that's a place to think seriously about flicking down a comma//or slash lines if you can get your reader to go along//or a flowery doodle or something ////
Now, to some nitty gritty about
the first three sets of common comma mistakes listed on the Table
of Contents in the home page. And a change of color to go with
a change of pace.
Items
(a), (b), and (c) in the Homepage's Contents are
all covered by pretty much the same
"rule," which is, you surround
all those irritating little stops like yeses and no's and
wells
and
uh's
and oh's, and people's names when you name them--right
,
Charley?--you
set them all off with commas.
Aids: "to set off" means to surround. Set off with commas means put one at the head and one at the tail. You can hear the pauses at the head and the tail if you'll read it aloud: Well, no, John, not now. Oh, maybe later, but you, John, especially you--uh, what was I going to say?
Once
more for the road: all those little hitches in a sentence, which have no
place to hide if you'll read them out loud, those things like expletives,
speech dysfluencies (uhh.., er.., duh..), calling someone by name directly
(referred to as 'nouns of direct address'), they all have to be surrounded
by commas or they won't read right: WellnoJohnnotnow. OhmaybelaterbutyouJohnespeciallyyou
is
not how you want that line read, but it's what you're forcing an experienced
reader to reproduce in their head, if you don't tell them where to pause
with your commas. So, besides creating a bad read out there, of your own
precious thought and expression, you've also got someone thinking you're
stupid.
Maybe not stupid, but...
[Art.Kevin]
An uneducated, unlettered, inexperienced
reader. Not very literate. Why read them if I don't have to?
That's what goes on consciously
or unconsciously in an experienced reader or
writer when you jam all the sense
together and leave out the rests.
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
,
, ' All
those little words, with rests in front and back of
' ,
' , them?
You set them off (which means surround)
with ',
,
commas.*
,
' , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , ,
, , ,
(a) Well//John//I
don't really think so.
Well, I don't really think so either, really.
John, do you think so? John? Oh, damnit, would
someone please give John a gentle smack?
(b) No, I'm not
going to do that. Yes, I care about my
grade, but John is bigger than I am.
(c) Uh, he's
bigger than I am, too. Why don't we just,
you know, leave him here.
* Department of the screamingly
obvious:
If the word
you're surrounding with commas comes at the very front or very end
of a sentence,
then you use the period or the capital to complete its surroundings:
No, this
isn't quite right, JohN.
Yes, no, uh, too, well, unh
unh, yeah . . . These are the ones were talking about. They
all get set off
(set off = surround) with
commas. Yes,
we
have no bananas.
You do, too!
No, uh,
I'm
sorry, but we're competely out. We
can't even see
them, much less have any!
And then when you call someone by name--when you address them--in the text, directly, then they get surrounded with commas, too. If you'll just listen, you'll hear that you're putting pauses around the name addressed, Jack, and you'll hear that that is different from just using the name to talk about the person in the 3rd person pov:
John, are you with me? (John is never
with us.)
We'd like for you, John, to at least smell the coffee. (We'd love
it if John would only
wake up and smell the coffee.)
See the pauses around John when he gets spoken to? And those pauses have to be indicated with something, and the convention is: commas. Ok, babe, got that? Whether it's a "noun of direct address" or a "proper noun of direct address," it's going to have those commas surrounding it, front and back. Whether you're talking to your little baby doll or to Madame TaraShea, if you talk to them directly, person to person there on the page, then you pause fore and aft: So listen close, baby doll, and then I won't have to call you TaraShea. Tara, are you listening? Hey, you. You with the feather. Come on, TS, help me out here.
Well, that's enough on these little
guys. Right, dear reader?
[Kevin art. Sleeping
Drodoo, snoring.]