If you’re a writer having your work edited (at any level, by anyone, including yourself), take note of this comment. I can vouch for its accuracy. Fall out of love with your punctuation: like every other aspect of your writing, it’s rarely at its best without a little editorial tweaking.
“Any copy editor of long experience has come upon authors who punctuate in bland carelessness or ignorance and then defensively claim that the periods, exclamation points, commas, and the rest are intricate parts of a well-laid plan and that it is not mere accident that an appositional phrase has a comma before it and none after it. A favorite explanation is that the punctuation is for the ear or for breathing. To this claim the copy editor is not allowed to answer (a) that if the author takes the book home and reads it aloud there will be in the annals of the book a total of oral readers amounting to one, or (b) that anyone trying to follow the punctuation marks in reading aloud will find himself panting like a dog on a hot day.”
—William Bridgwater, “Copyediting,” in Editors on Editing 69, 79 (Gerald Gross ed., rev. ed. 1985).
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March 15th, 2007 at 5:17 am
I know a very successful novelist who types a page of commas and sends it to her editor with her completed manuscript. “Use these wherever they’re supposed to go,” she says. “I know they’re needed, but I don’t know where.”
The average writer can’t get by with this and has to put the commas - and other punctuation - in the right place.
March 15th, 2007 at 6:49 am
Margaret Anglin says Mrs. Fiske is the best actress in America. (Anglin left this note in Mrs. Fiske’s bedroom. Mrs Fiske added two commas and returned the note.)
Margaret Anglin, says Mrs. Fiske, is the best actress in America.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:10 am
The comma that launched a thousand ships, met the colon that ate Cincinnati and the semi-colon was born. It is the most elegant punctuation; it is the most awkward punctuation.
I’m already loving your site, Lisa. Bravo.
March 29th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I want a comma in my name. Has anyone done that yet?