The common comma, is prone t,o mis,,use
I begin nearly every speech at writers conferences by stressing that only One Rule applies in writing. This rule is true—and it’s mandated—at every book publisher, every magazine office, every PR and ad agency. It’s true in poetry, in fiction, in nonfiction, in instructional manuals. It’s true in writing both formal and informal. And that rule is: Never start a sentence with a comma.
Even though I’ve anticipated it, I’ve received no argument about this advice lo the many years I’ve been using the tongue-in-cheek ice-breaker. Why have I anticipated argument? Because I’ve seen in print numerous instances where my edict has been broken with no apparent respect for The One Rule. (One of those instances was not a book called Comma Eats Comma Shoots Comma and Leaves
Comma Comma, though I’m thinking of using that as the title of my next project.)
I know that you, as well, have seen instances of The One Rule being broken. I know because you’ve read this far. Glance up to the first sentence of the second paragraph, directly above. You see
Even though I’ve anticipated it,
You’ve spotted the comma, correct?—the one that does not begin the sentence but in fact ends the phrase? Of course. It’s obvious. But do you recognize the comma that does begin the sentence? In fact, the highlighted series of characters above embodies two commas. One is the punctuation mark that we call a comma. The other is the phrase “Even though I’ve anticipated it,” which, curiously, is also a comma.
The first use of the word comma in English was a borrowing from Latin and Greek. A comma was a short phrase, not quite a sentence. (In fact, the OED gives as the definition of Greek comma “a piece cut off,” which might make a good model for people looking to tighten their prose.) The word comma in this definition, tracing back to ancient literature and in use in English by the 1500s, was subsequently transferred to the punctuation symbol that set off the short phrase, the piece cut off.
As an aside, that particular symbol has not always been the little descendent apostrophe that you’ve already seen twenty-seven times in this entry, and now twenty-eight times, and now . . . OK, stop that. Various symbols have been used to offset commas-as-phrases, including what we now call the slash, forward-slash (computer
Bill Brohaugh
V 4
times, and all), or the virgule (/), the use of which survives in today when quoting poetry within prose: “I think that I shall never see/ a poem lovely as a tree.” But the virgule kind of slipped down on the page, squinched up, and started to dribble below the line. I blame global warming, which melted the virgule into the present symbol. If you can’t stand the heat/ get out of the kitchen.
, that said/ I’m done with this entry/ except to say that you should never end a sentence with a comma/ either,^