Overuse of commas
First I thought to myself, "I seem to use too many commas." Now I'm no writer, but I've noticed that professional writers (and editors) clearly use less commas than I do.
For example, here's a sentence in a book that I'm reading: “As the victim was usually unconscious it was obvious they were totally reliant upon third parties and whatever action they took would determine their fate.”
I thought it was interesting, because I would've put a comma after "unconscious" and a comma before "and."
So, I found this helpful resource on grammar rules: https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp. 4a and 5b in particular were situations where I learned I could get rid of commas.
Still however, in the example sentence above, you'd think to put a comma before the "and" to separate the two clauses. I haven't found an explanation for omitting it, other than some writers are grammatically correct in a stricter sense, and others use commas more stylistically.
Is the use of commas more of an art, if you will, than I thought? How do you use commas personally?
Interested to read others' opinions!
As a linguist, I believe the biggest problem of written language comes from one thing, that it is not natural to human nature. By design, it is supposed to take on a medium, where you control timing, pitch and emphasis and put it in a linear line made of mere wiggles on paper. Because of this, a lot of things get left out and timing rules were generalized under what we call commas.
Now, in natural languages, we have a lot of arbitrary rules that humans have just somehow "settled" on it. We don't try to understand why a certain item is called the way it is even though we love to hypothesise about it and probably never gonna find an answer. But what didn't happen is that in written language, we didn't just universally agree on its rules. We just created institutions that govern how written text should be stylised and how things are spelt today are essentially the rules that carried from earlier days of the press.
Just like you said, the usage of commas is in a way, an art. At the end of the day, written language is your notation and commas are how you shape your music. Rules of how you're supposed to write that music are already written. But in a setting where you are not obliged to do so, I see no reason to stick to it in its entirety. Because, at the end of the day, I use my commas how a real speech sounds like in my head. If I am going to take a short stop to breathe, and maybe emphasise something, it deserves a comma.
I promise you I'm not trying to be a dick and there is a good reason I'm saying this, but I hated the way you used commas. That is exactly why I think using commas as pause markers is awful. For example, the below:
Putting pauses there but not before "in a way" just hurts. Your pauses affect where I break the clauses, so I see "the usage of commas is in a way" as a separate section from "an art." My mind stops and tries to parse that whole section even though "in a way" as a phrase is the extra flavor that is unnecessary to the meaning of the sentence. By the way, holy crap is it a struggle to decide where to put commas in this paragraph.
Putting commas exclusively where you would pause does not put it in your voice because I do not know you. It either puts it in a stilted version of my voice or, if it's really bad, William Shatner's voice (perhaps sometimes Christopher Walken's voice if you get the comma placement, just right).
I used to use many more commas because I needed to divide thoughts appropriately and follow the grammatical rules as I understood them. I knew I was using too many, and I knew it was making my writing harder to understand, but I felt like it was the right thing to do.
Then I noticed that Tolkien seemed to use fewer commas than I expected (and he was generally considered to be pretty decent at language and stuff) and then I read some article that made me start looking at commas slightly differently. So now I eliminate them if I feel it will make my writing easier to understand (I would have previously used a comma instead of a period at the start of this sentence).
The most shocking thing to me is that I never used a semicolon; I usually write in a way that really lends itself to them.
This is ironic, because commas were the first punctuation marks in European languages, and they originated specifically as a mark to tell an actor when to take a breath when speaking a line (or, more accurately, how much of a line they should speak on a single breath). They literally started out as pause markers!
If someone were to place commas in a sentence as indicated by the rules of English grammar, and then read that sentence out loud, they would find that the commas fall exactly where we naturally pause between clauses while speaking.
And, that's why @Maethon's non-placement of a comma before "in a way" seems off - because according to both natural speech and the resulting rules of grammar, there is a pause there, which should be indicated by a comma.
I couldn't find any web sources that satisfied my curiosity on this, but I'm not sure it's totally fair to say that the modern comma, as we use it today, was the "original" European punctuation.
I found this piece (which is corroborated by Wikipedia's note on Aristophanes of Byzantium's convention):
I had thought that the interpunct used in Classical Latin—used as word breaking punctuation much like we use spaces in written English today—was the original Western punctuation mark. It seems there were also marks like the coronis used in Ancient Greek documents.
Certainly an interesting rabbit hole!
What an interesting tidbit. It fits with musical notation I see today: in brass/woodwind parts (and possibly vocals?) there are often phrasing marks written just above the top of the staff to indicate a breath. Those marks are actually commas, though I never made the connection before.
Except speaking isn't a mathematical formula with only one "correct" way to do it. People put different em-phases on different syll-ables, or different parts of the sentence as part of how they speak or what they're saying.
Reading right through
with the pauses as indicated emphasises the last part of the sentence, that language is an art, instead of being a 'thoughtful pause'.
So... you would not pause between "is" and "in" in that sentence?
In that sentence, "in a way" is a non-restrictive adverbial clause. It can be added to or removed from the sentence without significantly changing the meaning of the sentence:
(I've removed the introductory clause, to simplify the discussion.)
Most people would verbally separate this inserted clause from the surrounding sentence by pausing before and after it: "the usage of commas is [pause] in a way [pause] an art".
If you speak through the first pause, you end up with a strange clause: "the usage of commas is in a way [pause] an art".
Try it. Say that sentence as if you're speaking to someone. Where do you pause? I pause twice: after "is" and after "way".
I can imagine speaking that sentence with no pauses or two pauses, but not one.
Yup, single pause just before "an art". Think of it like a newscaster making a "joke", or the end of a How It's Made segment maybe? Same construction as something like "I think vegetables are tasty, not!"
I'm not saying it's the 'standard' diction, but it's not something only an alien would come up with either.
That's... unusual. I just can't figure out how someone would not pause before and after the phrase "in a way". It's an intrusive clause, rather than part of the main sentence, and most people would naturally separate it out from the sentence that it's inserted into.
Oh well. You do you, I suppose! :)
I think you could say language is a lot like mathematical formula! There are often many different ways to reach the same mathematical fact, with each path emphasizing different nuances.
Yes, but they don't fall, everywhere that people pause. A lot of people use commas as though they are "light italics." That is, you might pause there when speaking to emphasize the next word, but it makes a sentence really weird when written down (like my first sentence). Not every pause comes between clauses, so when people use them as regular pause markers for how, they would speak, it can cause the reader's mind to interpret the first, non-clause section as a clause.
I had a problem with that example as well. I'd probably use less punctuation, but if I'm hellbent on using them, my version is:
If you think of commas as "nested modifiers," with less emphasis than parentheticals, then removing "in a way" leaves the sentence still functional. "Just like you said" acts as a prepositional phrase and its removal still leaves the sentence intact. While this mechanical way of treating commas removes some of the artistry, I find it keeps clarity always first and foremost. However, I don't actively think this way when writing, so I will break my "rule" for flow or expediency as I did in the second sentence of this comment.
This reminds me when Cormac McCarthy said something along the lines of 'I get by with the period, commas, and the rare colon.' He doesn't even use quotation marks in most of his works. The punctuation is rather sparse.
I am not a native speaker, much less writer, but I would write it like that:
Well, unless I intended to stress "way".
Looks good to me! Ultimately, there's probably dozens of ways to punctuate this line and it all depends on the context of the writing and the author's intent.
The first comma, to me at least, should be a colon.
Just as you said: the usage of comma's is, in a way, an art.
Although I'd write it:
Just as you said: the use of comma's is (in a way) an art.
But I'm staring at this way too long, and now everything I type feels awkward.
Both are appropriate, but they read slightly differently. Using a colon would make it more like a headline:
Whereas a comma indicates that it's an introductory phrase that could go anywhere in the sentence:
I like it. Your philosophy gives me something to think about. To consider in a wider sense, the development of written language. That commas create this rhythm of speech (phrasing which speaks to me musically, as a pianist). To be less rigid with the rules we've created, as long as it makes sense to the reader. Thank you for the insight.
I'd add that there are interesting differences between how different languages are written. While the above is generally true of writing in English, writing in other languages can follow different, less timing based conventions.
Written Finnish, for instance, uses commas primarily to mark clausal and phrasal boundaries, making commas largely a grammatical rather than stylistic marker, and not always corresponding to pauses or other features that one would hear in speech.
Comma use in conventions like written Finnish is much less an art form than in English, or even a question of guidelines, and much more an exercise in following a fairly strict and unambiguous rule set.
Of course, in casual textual correspondence, those rules, like many others, are often thrown out of the window.
Wow that's interesting. My mother's tounge isn't english, so when I was learning it, I noticed they do not really use a lot of commas. I didn't think much of it, as I thought it was just the rule. In my mother laungage we have a ton of rules on where and where not to put commas. By this sence it seems logical that, okay they don't use a lot of commas. But I never thought it was more of an artistic interpetion and it is really interesting to me. I even stop in my head (as I'm taking a breath) when I read a comma and this way how you write with commas just seems much more natural.
If you'd say that multiplying fifty-digit numbers isn't, which computers can easily do which are made by our hand, I'm with you. But what makes writing "unnatural" behaviour more than acquired language? Applying the rules for when to use a versus an in speech seems just as unnatural as in writing.
You don’t decide where to put a comma based on rules, you decide with your heart.
When you’re writing, you have an idea in mind about the metre of the sentence. Commas help you tell that to the reader. In your example sentence I would have put a comma in the same place as you, and replaced the second and with a semi colon, but the author may have intended a different rhythm than how I’m reading it out of context.
“As the victim was usually unconscious, it was obvious they were totally reliant upon third parties; whatever action they took would determine their fate.”
I used to work as an editor and writer (and still write for fun); to me grammar is more of a subjective art than a science - there are both hard and loose rules, but there are also a lot of grey areas that depend on your own judgement and intention for the impact of the piece. As an example, I recently read a book that started with “and”, lower case. It pulled you straight into the action, and broke all the rules, and it was incredibly effective.
This!! The comma is a tool to set the pace of the sentence.
No, because you wouldn't, talk, the same way I would. It would just make it seem, weird, to read things if I put a comma everywhere I pause. Plus, I think highly enough of you to believe you can read it properly without pause commas.
Isn't this what italics are for?
Italics are primarily used to indicate emphasis. I have never heard of their being used to indicate a pause.
But in this case, those pauses would have only been for emphasis, so yes, italics would be appropriate. I wrote those sentences with that in mind.
I would say no because that's essentially impossible. We don't know each other. The goal is to covey the meaning that you intend. I see this all the time where people put in a comma because they think they would pause somewhere, but that somewhere is at the end of a phrase that looks like a complete clause--but isn't. So in my head, I'm not pausing for a half second; I'm pausing for 20 seconds while I try to figure out what your first clause meant before I realize that the clause isn't actually complete; there's another two words that carry all the important meaning.
Well if you misuse them on purpose, yeah, it can sound weird ;) Tools can be misused and abused !
I really like this perspective. I'm curious - and you don't have to bother with this question if you don't have time - but what do you think of hyphens in place of commas or other punctuations in written conversation like how I just used them? I have a habit of using them either as an aside or as emphasis depending on how I'm feeling and sometimes I want to fix that. Other times, it feels like part of my written voice.
Another example would be that hyphens feel like a flow from one thought to another - as if I need an indicator that signifies this jumping around for the sake of clarity to the reader. But I'm also concerned that - when used excessively - it disrupts the word flow and potentially creates more confusion rather than clarity.
I’m a fan of hyphens and you’ll see them used liberally if you check my comments! They certainly have a use; I read an aside in hyphens quite differently than one in commas or brackets. To me brackets make me read something quietly (like this) while hyphens emphasise in a louder way in my inner voice - like this - and commas are somewhere in between, like this, where I read it in a different tone but the same volume as the rest of the clause. I’d be interested to know whether people without an inner voice think of them the same way.
As for connecting thoughts, I agree with you there too - a hyphen connects two thoughts together, where the first has led to the second; a semi-colon feels like two separate thoughts that happen to be a little related.
As for using any punctuation “too much”, well I don’t think there is such a thing. The way we use punctuation is as much a part of our personal voice as the words we choose. I’m guilty of using exclamation marks too much and sometimes I think it comes across as a little childish or over enthusiastic, the written equivalent of a golden retriever bounding in to the room, but when I take them out it no longer feels like me writing it. Of course, this is only true of informal writing - I’m much more strict with myself and cultivate a different tone when I’m writing something formal!
Wonderfully put. I'll definitely be referencing this whenever I feel like I'm overusing hyphens or other punctuations in general. Thank you!
You’re welcome!
I use commas to try to make my meaning as clear and obvious as possible. I don't like having to re-read sentences to parse them, and I don't care if someone's aesthetic sensibilities are offended by seeing commas. I do have a tendency to over-use them, but I'd rather err on the side of one too many than one too few. For me, writing gives you a chance to be less sloppy than speaking. My whole reason for writing something down is to communicate an idea, so I might as well be as clear as I can.
You have the answer I was about to write out.
Language is about being understood. Rules can go out the window, as long as what I'm writing conveys the meaning I'm intending, then the rest all settles out.
Personally I struggle with the same issue as OP - I seem to overuse commas, hyphens, punctuation in general. But I'm not bothered by it, because I see them more as pacing and tone markings than actual rule-based symbols.
Hmm. Along this line of thinking, here's something else I'm wondering. Were not comma rules created to aid in clear communication? As in there must've been confusion along the way, which necessitated a standard rule being added here and there. I guess I'm wondering, is there any time where you can omit a comma yet have the meaning be just as clear? I'm not sure.
Compare the following versions of one of your sentences:
Also, in your first quote, I'd use the comma with quotes around what you're wondering, eliminate the comma with your thought in italics, or rewrite it as "I guess I'm wondering if there is..."
I blame my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
I am a stickler for the Oxford comma, despite modern conventions having abandoned it. I blame the Associated Press. They were the first to abandon it, and for the mere sake of saving space, and ink, in print.
I know that joke, and I understand its premise, but I still read that as you being parented by Rand and God.
That might have to do with the fact that I believe the serial comma is non-optional, so I automatically read every sentence which omits it as being a deliberate, rather than stylistic, omission; the omitted comma is intended to convey meaning.
The Oxford comma is important, at least my daughter, Ayn Rand, and my son Karl Marx think so.
Did you mean:
Or:
Exactly. Although you have the options wrong. They should be "my daughter (Ayn Rand) and my son" or "my daughter, my son, and Ayn Rand."
Also, I meant to use a semicolon but I accidentally used a comma. This is a tragedy.
You bastard. :P
I could not parse that sentence at all, until I saw your correction below.
I actually thought you'd missed a couple of commas around "Karl Marx"!
Of course not; it's my son Karl Marx. My sentence clearly states that I have one daughter, Ayn Rand, and more than one son. ;)
Yes, but "my son Karl Marx thinks so" should be punctuated the same as "my daughter Ayn Rand thinks so" - both with commas around the explanatory detail of the names: "my son, Karl Marx, thinks so" and "my daughter, Ayn Rand, thinks so".
It should not. You put the comma before it if you are naming the only one. If you are naming one of multiple, you should not use a comma.
This is because if you only have one daughter, her name is extraneous information. If you have two sons, you actually need to specify which son you are referring to. You already know who my daughter is , but was it my son Karl Marx or my son Milton Friedman?
I had to check and double-check and triple-check that. I've never heard of such a rule before now.
It still doesn't quite make sense, but everyone seems to agree with you.
But, hey, this is the English language. It's supposed to have some nonsensical rules in it! :)
I blame my mother, Ayn Rand, and God.
I'm an Oxford comma user myself just bc I like it but people who talk about how it removes ambiguity always ignore examples where it does the opposite. In the end it's a 100% arbitrary standard whether you include it or not.
The ambiguity in your example is mostly (though not totally) orthogonal to the use of the oxford comma. Consider this, which elides the oxford comma but has the same ambiguity: 'I blame my mother, Ayn Rand, Tony Hawk and God'.
Oh yeah you can condition the same ambiguity without the Oxford Comma, I wasn't intending some be-all end-all here. It just always bugs me when people act like these ambiguous edge cases that very rarely occur in actual practice are the reason they prefer the Oxford comma. I prefer it myself, but we have to be honest -- we prefer it because we're familiar with it and we like how it looks, and people who use these ambiguities started from their preferred comma usage style and looked for examples to back up their opinions.
I can't speak for anybody else, and I don't know what arguments you've heard. But here is my view: language is inherently ambiguous, and will always be ambiguous; use of the oxford comma adds syntactic redundancy and entropy, increasing clarity.
I find the idea that a formulation like 'I blame my parents, Ayn Rand and God' is really ambiguous a bit absurd, because it's vacuous and lacks context. It's like saying that 'oh dear, he's got shit all over his face!' is ambiguous because we don't know who 'he' is. However, it seems like a fine way to present the issue and show where the increase clarity and redundancy comes from.
I'm not particularly convinced of this. The presence (or absence) of the Oxford comma doesn't add any information, redundant or otherwise, so I can't see how it adds syntactic redundancy (it doesn't interact with the syntax of the sentence whatsoever, as is the case for most commas) or entropy. The word "and" is doing all the work here in terms of meaning (as, indeed, it would in speech).
The Oxford comma is a rather English-specific quirk to begin with -- most other languages do not use a comma or equivalent in this position -- so it seems particularly odd to argue that it somehow is objectively superior in terms of conveying information. It's not. We like it because we learned to use it that way and are used to seeing it and writing it. That's fine. There doesn't need to be some objective rationale behind a punctuation preference -- punctuation rules are all made up anyway.
Ultimately, if you want to clearly communicate with others via written text, you need to learn when punctuation provides the important function of syntactic disambiguation. Outside of functioning as a signal of coordination, or clausal separation, however, use of commas is mostly a stylistic choice.
Prescriptivists may grimace at what they perceive as over- or underuse of commas (or other punctuation), but as long as your writing is clear (again, pay special attention to possible ambiguities in your writing), I’d say don’t stress about it too much. Cf. Lynne Truss’s classic “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation”:
The second blurb is hilarious, and I had to look it up. It's from James Thurber’s book 'The Years with Ross.'
To preface, I am not a native English speaker. But I figure I have a somewhat unique perspective on this topic exactly due to that fact. I've always had a weird relationship with commas when writing in English, because in my native language (Latvian) commas are a very necessary and defined part of sentences and without them a lot of sentences can lose structure. Somewhat related, I also tend to write very long run-on sentences in English which sometimes people point out, for this exact reason, since in Latvian you can have some really long sentences and that's considered fine (as long as the commas are used correctly). Hell, I will forever remember the tests I would have at school that would have practically have half a paragraph of a sentence with the instruction being "place commas in the right places" and we would be graded based on whether we have placed the commas correctly based on sentence structure rules.
Basically, I welcome using many commas as possible, since I'm used to it anyway due to how my native language works, plus, I think that it generally makes sentences much nicer to read. But I do, of course, think a bit differently than a native speaker would.
I have had a similar experience due to my Czech background.
We use commas:
It's very hard not to do it like that in English as well.
Thank you - that's an interesting perspective I hadn't really thought much of! I do know that there are grammar differences even just between US English and UK English.
Good writers can use commas (or omit them) to control the pace at which you read a sentence. Long sentences with more commas can snag your attention, make you stop and think, sometimes unnecessarily, because there's nothing really important to think about at that point.
"As the victim was usually unconscious it was obvious they were totally reliant upon third parties and whatever action they took would determine their fate." is a little too much for my taste, but only just barely. I'm a fan of short, snappy sentences in general. Like these. But adding one comma is more than enough to clear up the parsing of your sentence while still allowing it to be a smoother, faster read than if you added more. Words beamed straight into the reader's brain, like Stephen King's famous telepathy.
The one before “it was” is absolutely needed for proper pacing and clarity.
I wouldn’t judge someone for putting both but only putting one before “and” throws up “wait, what’s the antecedent?” alarms for me.
Oh, there's no antecedent. That's the term that clarifies it for me. Thank you!
I have sometimes knowingly and deliberately inserted commas into places they're not required grammatically, just to help the reader break up the long flow of words into smaller chunks.
Like you did there?
Yep! Form follows function. :)
The lack of commas actually bothers me. I would agree with your placement in that sentence. Grammar rules be damned, I put commas in places where I think I would pause if I were speaking the lines out loud.
Interestingly, there is a very important historical example of commas causing a major debate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text
On a grammar tangent, I personally don't understand why, in American English, we can't end a sentence with a quotation with a period outside the quote.
It's interesting to me how many people have piped up about using commas to indicate pauses, as if we are playwriting. In contrast, I place commas in order to convey the grammatical structure (parse tree, perhaps) of the sentences in my communication. I almost feel required by the structure to put particular commas.
I see these components:
hence:
Commas perform both functions: they convey the grammatical structure of a sentence and they indicate where we pause when speaking.
If you speak your sentence out loud...
... you will find that you automatically pause between each clause. It would be unusual to pause in the middle of a clause; we like to keep related words together. So, for example, you would probably not say: "As the ... victim was usually ... unconscious it was obvious they were ... totally reliant upon third ... parties and whatever ... action they took would determine their fate." That wouldn't feel right to you. You've split phrases that should be together: "the victim", "they were totally reliant", "third parties", "whatever action". We tend to speak related words (or clauses) together, and put pauses between those related words (or clauses).
The comma has a dual function: clauses and pauses. It's a dual-action tool, not an either/or proposition.
Yes, this is how I see it too! I felt the comma before "and" should be there, because the 2nd and 3rd components were complete sentences/clauses. Then a friend explained to me that the 3rd component is missing an antecedent, which makes it vague and incomplete. So it's dependent on the rest of the sentence that came before.
Even with this explained, my brain still sees it as 3 components that I want to separate with a comma, haha.
Are you me? I also use commas more often than most people, I sometimes think about the issue, and I wanted to put commas in the same places you mentioned as I was reading your example sentence.
I used to work as a Game Outsource Manager, which involved tons of written communication, and that role made me a bit self conscious about my writing style. Use of commas was one thing, and also I use parentheses WAY more than most people do (it sort of reflects my own stream of consciousness, as far as I'm concerned). But similar to what Maethon mentioned, comparing writing to having a personal music style, I came to accept and enjoy my own writing style quirks rather than worry about officially correct grammar. After a couple of overseas business colleagues sent me email snippets of their workers mentioning how they like my communication style, I chilled out about the issue.
There are a ton of thoughtful grammer-based responses in this thread, but I would emphasize that most people seem to have pretty bad writing skills these days. Here in the US, education in general has been pretty successfully attacked and weakened by 'conservatives' for about 40 years. And in the internet age there are tons of people from all over the world, many which know English as a second language, so it make sense that many of them don't have polished writing skills. And here in social media land, there are often tons of children posting and commenting, and they haven't even had the time to become good at written communication. This all makes me much more forgiving about how people write, so I don't mind when people write in all sorts of different ways. , , ,
Did you leave these spare commas here for us to insert into your paragraphs as we see fit?
Exactly, or maybe some folks are running low on commas, so I added a few extras
I definitely use a LOT of parentheses, but they're usually kept to casual communications within my personal life. I don't see them in professional communications like emails and whatnot, or even in healthcare documentation (I'm a nurse), so I feel like it's discouraged for some reason. But it's like I'm putting my stream of consciousness into text, like you said. I'm saying something as an aside. I guess a lot of reading and writing is subjective and personal. Everyone sounds different in their heads vs. what they sound like to others.
Saying something as an aside is literally called a parenthesis (the rounded bracket also being called a parenthesis).
You can have a parenthesis inside parentheses (like this) but it's also possible to do them, if you want, like I just did there with commas or – more common in fiction – using 'en' sized dashes.
I've also been a bit self-conscious of my user of parentheses, the brackets, so I've started using the dash form more and it feels less technical, more humanist.
Former editor here. The most influential book on how we use commas is Strunk and White's Elements of Style. The book is in the public domain: https://faculty.washington.edu/heagerty/Courses/b572/public/StrunkWhite.pdf
Thank you for the resource! I'm going on a trip, so this will be good to check out during downtime. :)
As someone whose first or second language is not English, I always thought that I was using too many commas when I write in English. In recent months, I have started putting my sentences into ChatGPT to see what kind of changes it makes to my writing grammatically. To my surprise, I have realized that the commas I use are generally appropriate, and I rarely see the AI omit them.
It is worth noting that when I write in my native language, I never think about commas and whether there should be one or not; I simply write the same way I speak.
Consider the following sentence:
Getting closer to the example provided by OP:
A single thing was obvious, specifically that it was red and blue. Written so as to include the omitted “that” in the “adjective + that”-clause:
Including a comma here raises questions. What did blue do? Is blue an adjective for a missing noun? Was it obvious that it was red and blue?
Let’s remove “it” as the primary subject and make “that ___” our primary subject.
Blue was obvious, but what of red?
My assumption is it was obvious that it was both red and blue, though for some reason we’ve separated out the blue. Perhaps the obviousness of it being red was the important information but the author wants to note that it is also blue? Additional context is needed, but we get the idea.
This is clear and concise. We can communicate the same information once again using “it” as our primary subject thusly:
This alternative order highlights the question answered by OPs. What was obvious?
Everything before “was obvious” is the singular subject. Adding a second “that” would lead to a plural subject:
But why was it obvious?
Putting it all together:
The comma is optional, but I can’t imagine leaving it out in anything more than the most basic of sentences.
Something on my phone changed and the keyboard now has a question mark where the comma used to be. I never noticed how many I was using until I had to delete a '?' every time I would have used one.
I think there are two separate issues:
Many people who do not write a lot are bad at punctuation (and grammar and spelling); they loosely use commas (or, worse, ellipses!), in nonsensical ways, frequently simply in places where a pause would go, in spoken language. This can result in an excess of commas, or a lack. Sometimes, people just add commas because they're not sure if one is needed, and it seems like the more conservative option; hence, amateur writing can contain excessive misplaced commas.
Stylistically, given multiple well-formed options (or ill-formed ones, deliberately chosen) for expressing a thought, with varying numbers of commas, one might be preferable to another.
Regarding point 1, certainly do learn where it is correct to use a comma, and where it isn't.
Regarding point 2, a lot of writing advice gets passed around as dogma; this is silly. I haven't heard anyone say that it's better to have fewer commas than more, although it wouldn't surprise me if somebody had. Reflecting, I think I probably have a weak preference for sentences with fewer commas, because minimising interruptions to the flow allows sentences to go on for longer and say more without feeling overly ponderous or like they've overstayed their welcome. But, of course, sometimes you want to break things up.
Rather than think about whether it is better to have more commas or fewer, or even whether some usage is grammatical or not (though this point still does deserve some regard), I think the most important thing is to think about what the purpose of a comma is, in some situation. Why use a comma, why not use one? It is both situational and stylistic, and this should be the factor you consider more as you read.
I think also in re to point 1, a lot (the vast majority for many) of what we read is informal - it’s texts and emails from friends or social media posts. I have an excellent grasp of grammar, but the way I use it in formal writing is very different to how I use it informally; it’s sort of like slang vs the queens English. I’ll use elipses to denote a longer pause, skip capitals, omit full stops, use a question mark to denote an uprising tone even when it’s not a question etc in texts to friends because it mimics my own tone and style of speech. When I’m writing and when I was editing, I follow the accepted grammar rules.
Both ways are correct, imo, (just like using “literally” to mean metaphorically is now correct, but I wouldn’t use it that way in a science paper) they just have different places they’re appropriate.
You can see why people might be confused
From Collins:
From Longman:
From Oxford Advanced Learner's:
etc etc.
If you are reading a text aloud, and there is a comma written, then the comma does indicate that you should pause, yes (though you are under no obligation to). If you are transcribing something spoken, however, then a pause might indicate any number of things, including a comma, some other form of punctuation, or no punctuation at all. (And it is usually not unambiguous, either.) Furthermore, the conventions of written language are different from the ones of spoken language, such that the sorts of things you write if writing for writing's sake are not simply transcriptions of the sorts of things you would speak if speaking for speaking's sake.
You'll pry my commas out of my cold, dead hands.
Legitimately I'm addicted to them, they make writing long streams of conciseness out online way easier. At the end of the day, as long as someone gets your meaning, does proper grammar and punctuation really matter? I'm a bit believer in being flexible with language "rules" especially since the whole thing is just made up garbage that's been in flux for thousands of years.
Hmm. I think I would say I use commas like you do. I sometimes forget, but thankfully, that doesn’t happen too much.
I like, to use, commas, like William Shattner, speaks.
I, myself, prefer to use, the extraordinary, comma, more in the style, of Christopher Walken, when he's sick, with cowbell, fever.
In all seriousness though, I do tend to write unnecessarily long run-on sentences typically joined by commas. I've started making an editing pass whenever I write something just to space out my punctuation a bit and chop up my sentences.
Of course, now that I've removed some of my power to make a side comment (the kind you might see in brackets like these), I tend to make an inordinate number of bracketed asides; frequently more than one in a paragraph (if I think I can get away with it).
Excuse me, I must defend my dear friend Christopher's honor here. He most certainly would not put a comma between "cowbell" and "fever." He would hit "fever" as if he were my dad and his fever had just spoken back to him:
I have some of my own rules when it comes to commas. It seems redundant to put a comma in front of and; the word itself already does that job. I don't use the Oxford Comma; if you need it, the sentence wasn't written clearly. And I try to replace commas with semicolons and hyphens.