![]() That’s not workable for everyone, and - this will strike some as heresy - I have no problem with writers using a tool like Grammarly to help find missing commas (and get rid of the ones that are there for no reason).Įarly automated usage and grammar correctors were pretty dumb. If this person is really wonderful, they can explain the errors to you, so you’re less likely to make them again. The best option is probably to hire a good proofreader (or possibly even an off-duty English teacher) to look over your work and find the errors. We’re lucky to live in the 21st century, with a bunch of useful resources to help us fill in those gaps. So you may not have been paying rapt attention when your teacher talked about comma usage, or what semicolons are for, or how to form the trickier possessive plurals. You were probably a lot less geeky than I was when you were in 9th grade. When professional writers don’t know how to use commas and other punctuation marks, they make their clients or their organizations look ill-educated and careless. If you’re the designated scribe for someone else, just as it’s your responsibility to learn how to overcome writer’s block, it’s also your responsibility to make that person or company look amazing. Professional writers have an additional obligation. A special note about commas for professional writers Learning how to use a comma helps that happen naturally and painlessly. If you’re writing content for any kind of purpose - for clients, for relationship building to support your business, or even to promote a hobby or other personal writing goal - your words have to find the right place in your audience’s ears. Getting a really good grasp on punctuation allows you to write more like you talk, by giving the reader a simple way to understand the structure of each sentence. I think learning to write like you talk is a magnificent goal. Better to just “write like I talk,” and let the writing voice make a connection. Some writers feel that the rules of punctuation will make their content stuffy. Do commas matter in “conversational” copy? If you want to learn how to become a freelance writer, proper comma usage is non-negotiable. It’s about making your writing clearer, more pleasing, and easier to read. Getting your punctuation in order isn’t about making English teachers happy. “they make it clear to the understanding and the emotions by showing what it sounds like where the breaks come where to pause” Take the last bit of that and strip away the punctuation. Commas and periods bring out the grammatical structure of a sentence they make it clear to the understanding, and the emotions, by showing what it sounds like - where the breaks come, where to pause.” “… punctuation tells the reader ‘how to hear’ our writing. I love what Ursula Le Guin had to say about punctuation in her book on narrative, Steering the Craft: Sentences that stop me in the middle, like that horrible person who brakes in the middle of the street to read a text.Īnd sentences that just seem to be running out of breath, because the writer hasn’t learned how to use a comma. Sentences I need to re-read to figure out which words go together. I see only slightly less extreme versions of this in marketing stories every day. Is it “country babies?” “Equality freedom?” Quit trashing your writing voice with this rookie mistake Notice, though, how you’re not sure which words belong together. That one’s a little extreme, since it’s a list of nouns. That’s a quote from a classic post of mine, with the commas in a list ripped away. “Do you love dogs the planet your flag and country babies justice equality freedom?” ![]() ![]() Plus, you fail to communicate the types of tone in writing that help you build loyal audiences. When you leave out the commas, particularly if you then throw a couple of random ones in there, your content ideas run the risk of looking uninformed, silly, or just plain confusing. Please, please my dear fellow writers, knock it off … Give us 30 minutes and we’ll transform how you sell online. ![]()
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