I have, a problem, with commas.
It’s one of those things I’ve never quite grasped, not 100% anyway, no matter how many edits I run through with the oh-so-patient and forgiving editors of LT3 and no matter how many times Kelly Wyre has to bonk me (figuratively) over the head.
It’s not my fault.
Okay, it is, but I’m going to blame it on someone else – two someone elses actually: my primary teacher and Captain Kirk.
When I was in third grade (think way, way back) my teacher tried to explain comma use to me. Commas, she said, are a way for your reader to hear your pause.
She meant well, I’m sure of it. Unbeknownst to her, I seem to hear everything I’m writing as if it’s being spoken by Captain James Kirk of the Starship Enterprise: “The Enterprise (pause) is stranded (pause) in the Delta Quadrant.”
The boy, walked toward, the shiny car.
I can even see it in my head: the narrator, sitting in a high back leather chair with legs crossed and one hand on the armrest, speaks the sentence while narrowing eyes, pantomiming thought at every pause and frowning with each emphasis. This is serious stuff the narrator is trying to tell us. We have a boy (pause to think of boy: how young is this boy? What’s he doing out here by himself? Damn it, kid, where are your parents?) and he is walking, not just anywhere but toward, (pause to consider this… I mean, really? He’s going to walk toward? Is that safe? Has he thought this through?) the shiny car.
Drama! Intrigue! Excitement!
Not at all. As a matter of fact, all those useless commas are as annoying as listening to too many clips of Captain James T. Kirk. So why, oh why, do I keep putting them in? What part of me (slips into mustard yellow shirt) is so damn set (sits down in chair and crosses legs) on doing something (lifts one eyebrow and gazes thoughtfully) that I know will annoy people, including myself? (Karate chop)
Well, for one thing, human beings are creatures of habit. We like doing things over and over again, and we gain a sense of comfort from consistency. Yes, even the wrong consistencies. Even addictions are, in an oversimplified statement, merely bad habits that have become so ingrained in who we are that we can’t shake them. At the root of our psyche there is a need for stability. Stable means known, known means experienced, and repetitive processes ensure experience. The longer we’ve done something, the harder it is to stop doing it, because it actually becomes a pattern that is integrated into the oatmeal muck we know as the brain; and the longer it sits there, the more a part of the muck it becomes. This particular process is performed by good ol’ Mr/s/x Dorsomedial Striatum, which is a part of the brain that controls flexible behavior. This clump of goo is connected to the areas of the brain where associations are recognized and formed. And he/she/xe works fast, too. In as little as 18 days a process can become a habit. Within five months it can become a lifetime one.
Good news, though – they tell me any habit can be unlearned if one devotes themselves to the process.
Unlearning Bad Habits
- Recognize the habit for what it is: something that needs to be stopped.
- Figure out what it is that you should be doing differently.
- Try and work out what it was you were feeling before you started in on your habit. What were the outside stimuli and/or impulses that were influencing you?
- Refocus yourself through conscious attention to recognize when these factors are intruding and respond to them before the habit can start, by…
- Substituting the “right” thing you decided to do in step 2 for the “wrong” thing you identified in step 1.
Now that sounds like a fairly decent start to breaking a whole hell of a lot of bad habits. It sure beats having to walk around with bitter yellow fingertips as I did as a child, while my mother did her best to try and keep me from gnawing on my fingernails. I’ll have to bring this up at our next dinner engagement.
But I honestly can’t say whether this will do a thing to help me from sticking in my JTK commas. We can always hope.
How about you? Do you have any bad habits (be it with writing or fingernails or belly-button crud) that you’d love to get off your chest and share with a couple hundred of your closest Internet buddies? Please, we’d love to hear about them.
Otherwise, until next time…
AF Henley <3
Henley was born with a full-blown passion for run-on sentences, a zealous indulgence in all words descriptive, and the endearing tendency to overuse punctuation. Since the early years Henley has been an enthusiastic writer, from the first few I-love-my-dog stories to the current leap into erotica. A self-professed Google genius, Henley lives for the hours spent digging through the Internet for ‘research purposes’ which, more often than not, lead seven thousand miles away from first intentions but bring Henley to new discoveries and ideas that, once seeded, tend to flourish.
Henley has been proudly publishing with Less Than Three Press since 2012, and has been writing like mad ever since. Check out Henley’s newest release, Wolf, WY on Amazon, directly through LT3 Press, or at your favourite online book dealer.
For more information, please stop by for a visit at afhenley.com.
I have a fondness (read bad habit), for the overuse of commas. I suspect we must have had the same grade three teacher, cause everytime I pause to think, of what I want to say next, I usually start-up with a comma, before typing out my scattered, umm, thoughts.
Janice, your comment just made me laugh out loud. Which I’m sure will annoy my roommate to no end as he worked until 2:30 this morning. XD
I like to think that means we’re just careful thinkers. We’re, uh, trying to organize our thoughts, as we, you know, type them out. Sure, that’s what it is. Let’s go with that. 😀
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You guys learn comma use in 3rd grade? I learned it in 7th grade, but then again, I was stuck in ESL classes from 1st through 6th grade, so I don’t think punctuation marks were quite the primary concern. Had to know how to speak and write in the language first. XD
My 7th grade teacher was overly efficient in teaching me comma usage. He had this book called “Links” that explained how commas go into structure. A few of us understood it at the snap of the fingers, but the majority of the class didn’t seem to quite get all the nuances down. Personally, I think it boiled down to memorization and logic for me. Stuck with me all these years, and I’m sure you’ve read a couple of Tumblr posts I’ve re-blogged about the Oxford Comma, aka parallelism.
But I take liberties with other punctuation marks as well, such as the hyphen/dash where I find myself thinking. I think I use those the same way you use commas. XD
We all have our vices, although all those hyphens makes for interesting reading. XD
Thank you for sharing! <3
You’re very welcome, and thank YOU for commenting!
(leans close, whispers: There’s the slightest possibility I also overuse m-dash. And the n-dash. And being Canadian, I *know* I overuse the hyphen with respect to US English.) XD
Here’s to enjoying our vices, or at the very least, being able to laugh at them. (clinks glass)
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I was also taught commas were for pauses. While I may not pause like JTK, my pauses are a bit odd sometimes or I hear pauses that shouldn’t be there.
Let’s see….bad habits.
I abuse the ellipses, it’s meant to show something is missing or having fallen short….I use them as pauses. xD
I have several books on grammar but never seem to get far. The second they identify certain words as “prepositions” I zone out. I don’t think I’ll ever get the parts of a sentence. However, I do learn by example quite well. So I do hope after reading a lot of books I’ll only be half as bad at writing as I am now…..unless I read the wrong books then I’m screwed. xD
Laziness especially when it comes to cleaning. I like so many people will leave things to “tomorrow.” But sadly my distorted sense of time leaves them longer than that sometimes. It’s very depressing to learn I’ve left something on my desk for a full week thinking I only did it yesterday.
I leave work that I need to do alone to pursue work I want to do. Ever since my two ambulance rides my boss has been hounding me to get a HBABP (Hit By A Bus Packet) together. But it’s so boring writing down the facts of the office and my daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly procedures. Also as busy as I am he may discover how little I actually do. xD I’d much rather be programming a user admin tool that will talk with our Active Directory and Google Apps accounts for easy user maintenance.
I drink from the carton more often than I use a cup. Milk, juice, doesn’t matter. If it’s in my fridge it’s probably touched my mouth. That’s why I only offer water to guests.
I get half-way into a project and the second it becomes difficult or requires more materials, I move onto something else. I always come back to it eventually but it just lingers there while I make up my mind. I’ve had a full year go by before trying again.
I have an odd joy of being outwitted, it lets me learn something new. But I act like a pouty child when it happens. I have this need to be seen as smart, but I’m not afraid to voice my opinion on something I don’t understand when I’m around people whom I believe can correct me. So, I learn by being brash and bull-headed.
I’m a spender. I give myself a $35 allowance, and I’ve already spent that for the next three months. But I mean come on, Legend of Zelda and a Raspberry Pi. These were obviously necessities. While paying off a credit card in a timely manner with more than minimum payments is good for my credit history and score, it’s not a good way to live.
When it comes to my health I’m a wait and see kind of person. Maybe it’ll clear up in a week. It’s not the price of medical here that does that, it’s I don’t like waiting. And I’m a slight hypochondriac. It only gets worse when I’m waiting for a doctor. At home, it’s just something simple.
I could come up with more (I’m very self aware) but this is getting long. I remember when I was little in Sunday School they had us write down our sins or bad habits and things like that. We would then curl them up and think them together like paper chains. Most kids could barely come up with three, while I looked like Jacob Marley. First time I ever got praised for being naughty.
Anyway, that’s what editors are for isn’t it? You make a good story, they make it readable. I feel dirty for even suggesting that. It’s like purposely dropping your crumbs on the floor and saying it’s the custodian’s job to clean it up. No, we should always strive to do our best. They’ll help us if we can’t keep clean and proper, but we should always be trying to improve. It’s why I wipe my feet before entering a building, and it’s why I send all of my work through several automatic grammar checkers.
Your first commas are your own. Then clean them up as you read it and it seems ridiculous. I think you’ll find you breaking yourself of the habit, or at least of being able to fix it after you’re indulged the bad habit. xD
I’m still chuckling over your enthusiasm at being praised for being naughty. I can think of more than a few people who would appreciate that particular nuance of yours quite dearly. 😉
Also loving the mental image of you positively swaddled in your Chain Of Vice. Awesome. (highfives)
Thanks for another great laugh!
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Oh, good that you wrote a post about the use of comma because I want to file an official complaint right here and now!
Do you know how terrible reading English is for me??? There are NEVER enough commas in your language! And the few you guys use? You put them ad odd places sometimes! Having to read that makes my skin feel like an army of those fire ants crawling on it and through my brain! It makes my left eye twitch in that no-i-am-no-psycho-but-i-do-have-these-strange-urges way! XD
So please? For the sake of your devoted German reader’s mental health? Double or better triple the amount of commas in your otherwise beautiful language? 😉
And speaking of bad habits? Hmmmmm…(contemplates while polishing my halo) I can not think of anything? 😉
I eat enough and always get enough sleep. When being told to go to bed, I follow that immediately and without debate. I do not procrastinate.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us again! 😀
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There we go then, we’ve figured it out! I think I’ve got some German hidden in me somewhere. 😀
And you, my friend, can add the telling of fibs to your list of bad habits. XD
Thank you for reading and commenting, buddy.
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