Commas – the writer’s workhorses

Behold the glory – and the enduring frustration – of genius. Here is the opening line of William Faulkner’s novel, “Absalom, Absalom,” considered by some critics to be the best novel ever written about the American South.

From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that – a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.

It was on the strength of “Absalom, Absalom” and the more well-known “The Sound and the Fury” that Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Novel Prize for Literature.

Generations of high school students have struggled to master his dense, clause-choked, idiosyncratic prose, his unhinged characters and his bleak assessment of the human condition.

What to avoid

When I first started teaching journalism writing and reporting, I used the passage above as an example of what to avoid. Although it paints a vivid picture of the scene, it requires fierce concentration and rigid discipline to absorb the author’s description and give it meaning.

In short, it has a comma problem. “Absalom, Absalom” opens with a 122-word sentence containing one lonely comma.

True, it also has a single dash and a parenthetical phrase that help the befuddled reader navigate the treacherous literary landscape. But a hatful of commas would have helped reader comprehension even more. So would a period or two.

Faulkner being Faulkner, however, we are plunged into the sentence to fend for ourselves without commas to foster understanding and deliver clarity. And the miserly Faulkner didn’t stop there. He also banned the apostrophe in “o’clock.” (Admit it, you thought I made a typo, didn’t you? Didn’t you?)

Raisins in a cookie

Me, I love commas. I spread them liberally in my writing, like raisins in an oatmeal cookie. They are the workhorses of good writing, serving as traffic signs to control pace and tempo, and as guide rails to keep the reader on board and engaged.

Some writers jealously hoard commas as if they were gold ingots, only parting with them under extreme duress. Others apparently believe a passage sparse in commas and other helpful punctuation aids displays a lofty disregard for literary conventions and signals a creative free spirit.

Whatever. I figure, rightly or wrongly, that if you've got ’em, use ’em.

Many of the rules for comma usage are straight-forward and direct. Others, less so.

For instance, some writers I’ve edited over the years struggle with how to deal with appositive clauses, prepositional or otherwise.

Mrs. James told those of us in her seventh grade English class that introductory prepositional phrases of five words or more must be followed by a comma. It was a hard and fast rule. Five words – or more. Mrs. James was no ditherer. Free will didn’t amount to a bucket of spit in her domain.

It was only later that I learned – after being buffeted by the wild winds of daily journalism – that the minimum word count needed to trigger a comma alert was something best left to the writer’s discretion – and to the needs of the particular sentence.

But who are we kidding? Almost all introductory clauses, no matter the length, read better followed by a comma.

For example:

At first light, the British garrison at Rorke’s Drift saw the massing Zulu army arrayed across the veldt.

In truth, a bird in the hand is best left to join its feathered companion in the bush, lest it poop on said hand.

A brief detour

The same principle applies to prepositional phrases – or any type of appositive clause – that occurs in the middle of a sentence. Because of the disruptive power of such interruptions to the flow of the sentence, commas are useful in announcing to readers that they’re being taken on a brief detour before they can continue their trip to the next period.

The job of the writer is to make sure the detour (a) is worth the delay (b) provides compelling information and (c) doesn’t take too long.

My personal comma conundrum is trying to remember whether restrictive or nonrestrictive words and phrases should be set off by commas. Or to recall what the hell the difference is between restrictive and nonrestrictive or, depending on the grammar text you prefer, essential and nonessential.

If memory serves, commas precede and follow nonrestrictive elements, the sort of parenthetical information that isn’t necessary to the meaning of the noun they modify. Or it is restrictive words and phrases that need commas? No, I just checked. Nonrestrictive – commas. Restrictive – no commas. Perhaps I should tattoo that on my wrist.

Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief of Random House, dubs the commas in nonrestrictive cases “only” commas.

In his brilliant book, “Dreyer’s English,” he explains thusly: “‘Only’ commas…are used to set off nouns that are, indeed, the only one of their kind in the vicinity.”

For example:

My dog, Bob, barks every time he hears a gnat fart in the front yard. (I have only one dog, the fictional Bob, so his name isn’t essential to identifying the source of my frustration. Commas are required.)

My dog Bob barks every time he hears a gnat fart in the front yard. (OK, I admit it. I like to write the word fart. But my point is that in this case, I have a pack of hounds, and only the aurally astute Bob barks at insects with digestive issues. So no commas!)

Other examples:

My son, who is very good at math, just won a scholarship to MIT. (My only son has won a scholarship. His math skills, while important to MIT, are nonessential information in identifying who won the scholarship.)

My son who is very good at math just won a scholarship to MIT. (Of my two sons, one is a math whiz who’s going to MIT.)

Here’s where it can get tricky. Let’s take the following sentence:

Jill and husband Jack concocted a wildly improbable tale about going up a hill to “fetch a pail of water.”

Provide nuance

Let’s leave aside my provocative use of quotation marks to suggest Jill and Jack had impure motives for cresting that dang hill. Notice instead that I didn’t put commas around Jack, even though we can assume that the racy Jill only has one husband.

 Why not? Because in this case, “husband” is a label, a title if you will, that I have assigned to Jack. Just as we wouldn’t write, Jill and coach, Jack, concocted…, we don’t encase Jack in commas in the original sentence. If we place a “her” in front of “husband,” however, it’s a different kettle of fish entirely.

Commas often provide nuance to sentences.

The cavalry charge that occurred on the third day of the struggle determined the victor of the Battle of Gettysburg. (Of all the cavalry charges at Gettysburg, the charge on the third day was decisive.)

The cavalry charge, which occurred on the third day of the battle, determined the victor of the Battle of Gettysburg. (Forget the infantry battles, the cavalry charge, which just happened to occur on the third day, was decisive.)

The respective uses of relative pronouns “that” and “which” in the sentences above are worthy of note. Disregard the grammatical jabber and remember: That is never used with a comma in such constructions, and which is always used with the comma. Simple, right?  

The serial comma

I’ll end this little discourse on commas with some brief observations about the serial comma.

I first was taught to eliminate the comma before the conjunction in any series in my 11^th grade journalism class. My teacher, the venerable Erma Stewart, said it was one of the things that distinguished newspaper writing from English class essays. She might as well have been Moses delivering the 10 Commandments to the Israelites. I was 16.

Lessons learned 50 years ago are hard to break.

So I’ll continue to shun the serial comma as if it were a smallpox-tainted pillowcase. I owe that to Stewart, a formidable woman who insisted her students address her only by her last name.

If you, however, wish to follow the herd and embrace the unnecessary and wasteful serial comma, I cannot stop you. When the hordes are at the gates, we must pick our battles carefully.

I realize sadly that with the death of newspapers, the triumph of the serial comma is all but inevitable. We keepers of the flame must now steal quietly into the hills and wait for better days.

A final word about Faulkner’s interminable beginning to “Absalom, Absalom.”

Several years after I started using it as an example of what not to do, I sat down and re-read the passage in preparation for the next day’s lecture. Suddenly, I was reading it with new eyes.

Where I once had seen turgid prose, I now saw elegant word play and graceful pacing. Where once I had struggled to comprehend, I now glided from word to word, phrase to phrase, glorying in the beauty of the writing and the efficacy of the scene it painted.

The lecture I presented the next day was much different from the ones I had delivered previously about “Absalom, Absalom.” That proves, I guess, that you can teach an old dog new tricks. And that only the dim and deranged refuse to keep learning. A fresh perspective is a wonderful thing, ain't it?