Job Discussion Forums

[Marcoregano]

Perhaps the mighty comma is linked to freedom of speech???!!!

[Snoopy]

Stephen Fry put it succinctly. His hobbies are eating his godchildren and missing out commas.

[Marcoregano]

Oddly enough, in my evening class last night I was asked by one of my students to explain commas [I've never been queried about them before] and stupidly, instead of saying I'd deal with it another time, I gave it a go. It was a mess.... think I just added to their confusion. Not something to have a go at off the top of your head, unless you really know your stuff. When will I learn not to do that!

[Stephen Jones]

-----" We happily follow the rules to capitalize the first letter in a sentence and to place a period at the end; making our writing that much more comprehensible. Why not do the same with commas?"-------

The rule is simple; commas indicate a pause that is not covered by any of the other punctuation signs. You can be strict sorting things out into classes, but you will always have one class left where you put everything else that doesn't fit into your neat classes, and that is the function used by commas.

Pauses can simply be a quirk of the speaker. More often they symbolize a break in the semantic unit, as in John Slat's example. However, the comma is only obligatory to avoid confusion. Indeed little harm is done by missing out the comma after an initial 'indeed' or 'however' (or a final 'for example') for example.

[guest of Japan]

What about in the difference between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses? Is this a hard set rule?

[johnslat]

Dear guest of Japan.
I'd say yes - since the use of commas - or not - often prevents ambiguity and/or misunderstanding.

My brother, who lives in Miami, is rich (I have only one brother).

My brother who lives in Miami is rich (I have more than one brother).

Regards,
John

[guest of Japan]

Thank you. That's what I thought, but I wanted to get an outside ruling.

[Hogbear]