In my writing I tend to use a lot of comas when I could just end the sentence, instead I often choose to keep going. It’s not that the punctuation is necessarily wrong (or maybe it is, but to my knowledge it is right), it’s just that the longer a sentence is, the more tedious it becomes to read. It’s not that coma use is bad; the issue comes in when one has so many comas, that the point of ones statement, description, etc., is lost in the midst of them.
One small example of this (but not my worst example of over-use of the coma—but one of the first I found) is in my fictional story:
Wearing a regal black cape with jewels imbedded in the collar and connecting chain, he slunk like a panther to his throne, sitting down to face those present and waving his hand gracefully, as if his mere presence was enough to satisfy any need.
Again, not necessarily incorrect, yet a lot of comas were used (again, definitely not my worst). Thankfully, my coma use is not as bad as it used to be, since I am aware of it and have found other ways to continue a sentence, such as the use of semi-colons, dashes, and colons.
This leads me to one of my most recent “issues” (which I prefer to call an evolutionary step in my writing). This “problem” is that of the Dash. Just as Barbara has a overactive love for Dash, so do I! Ever since I discovered dash, I began to enjoy using it—often much more than I need to. I’ve used 3-4 dashes in one paragraph. Of course, I then realize what I’ve done and I go back to fix it—which is sad, because I do enjoy double-tapping my dash key in order to make the break. So again, it’s a problem I can have, but when reviewing what I wrote, I always discover it and correct it. Despite my corrections, it’s not long before I bring my friend Dash back onto the page to add life to the party of other punctuation marks—I can’t help it, he has some great lines (I know, bad pun)! Even looking back on this paragraph, I’ve used the long dash 3 times.
But even though I can overuse some of these punctuation marks, I can’t say I regret it too terribly. It wasn’t that long ago that the only punctuation marks I used were comas and periods—which excluded the “variety fun pack” that is available to me now and that bring life, variance, and a level of richness I did not have in my writing when I started. As I said earlier, I prefer to look at my use of grammar as evolving (like Barbara explained to us in class), because it is! Yes, I use a lot of comas and dashes, and even parenthesis (but only in informal writing—when I tend to use them a lot, very rarely in papers or my fictional works), but I look at it as adding character to what might otherwise be dull and mundane. After all, who wants to go to a party when every guest is the exact same two characters (comas and periods)?
