The Comma

A couple of Times articles about the comma:

 

I was expecting a thread about the worst possible superhero ever.

 

Comma-comma-down-doo-bee-doo-down-down.....

 

I've yielded a lot in the past 15 years, but I'm not yielding that one. You have to close that clause, and that one, I'm going to hang onto to the bitter end.

 

My biggest comma pet peeve is when writers separate a compound sentence like this:

Jimmy Baserunner hit a double to leadoff the first inning, and scored when Billy Runbattedin singled.

or

Steve Runningback finished with 356 yards rushing, but failed to score a touchdown.

 

Well done, and it made me long for the best-named poster on this board, the Comma Chameleon.

 

Even worse is using "leadoff" as one word except as an adjective.

 

Rookie mistake.

 

In a few years you'll be unlearning this: www.mlahandbook.org/fragment/public_index;jsessionid=A38F80A27CC89AC4654C64754AA14BA8 and then the Chicago Manual of Style. And then The Epic of Gilgamesh. By the end of your education, you'll have unlearned Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, too. But you'll have a good fix on 'Transfiguring Marxist Gender Identities and Textual Fauvism in the Early Work of Ethel Kline-Borimeer.'