Deputy Grammar: 12 Laws of the Comma

Lindsay Shalla
12 min readDec 6, 2020

Buckle up. This is gonna be a long one…

Everyone has seen the sentences.

When you eat Maya can clean up.

When you are finished digging the dog can go for a walk.

Hannah got down on her knees, she begged.

Commas add clarity and make it easier to read sentences. When a comma is misplaced or omitted altogether, the resulting sentence is enough to make readers scratch their heads. And if you aren’t looking for confusion and random humor in your writing, it’s best to learn the laws of the comma.

In the age of advanced technology and spell checkers, it’s easy to think that you won’t have to worry about grammar and spelling. You trust your computer to fix it for you.

It’s vital to clear up this misconception straight away. Spell checkers do catch some of your missed or overused commas, but only around 2/10 mistakes will be flagged in all your writing.

A common example of spell checkers going awry is auto-correct. Think about all the times your auto-correct has thought you’ve spelled something crazy when you meant something normal. Technology is an enemy cleverly disguised when it comes to grammar, especially with those tricky commas. Instead of relying on grammar checkers constantly, have the comma laws up your…

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Lindsay Shalla

Aspiring author and editor of all things. Curiosity is the spark that ignites creation.