the successful brother to the failing semicolon. comma lives in a beautiful 4-bedroom suburban home with a white picket fence around the yard while the semicolon picks through trash at night trying to make ends meet while sharing a studio apartment with another failure, the ampersand.

but seriously... i use waaaaaaaaaay too many commas. i honestly dont know propper comma use. in fact, i am going to go out on a limb and say that 89% of all users here dont know proper oxford comma usage? are you one of these people?

if someone could help me with my punctuation dilemma, that would be, wonderful, yes.

There are numerous small books of proper punctuation guides available. First rule is don't use a comma as a period.

Im more of a dot dot dot... girl

typographical (Toronto, Ontario)
to aviod confusion (Furthermore, ....)
to seperate contrast (cold, but crispy)
seperate quotes (while walking the dog, Peter said "....)
seperate parenthicals (Mary, his baby sister, can finally walk on her own)
to piece independent clauses (she liked her shoes, but she hated her dress)


Thats the rules i can remember lol... Dont ask how i remembered..

A comma goes with a name
If that's who you're talking to.
A comma with quotation marks
Will sure keep you out of the stew!

Before TOO at the end of a sentence,
After YES and NO when they come first.
A comma with DEAR BOB
And YOUR FRIEND
Can save you from what is the worst!

Appositives need some commas
Dates with the year do, too.
Between city and state, some commas
Will make a good student of you!

Commas before conjunctions
Can join two sentences, too,
When dependent clauses come first,
A comma will work well for you!

I won't ask but I am curious.

excellent first post

thank you!!! i suck at english and grammar.

Im so cookoo for commas, that I just HAD to put my first comment in this discussion :P
I suck at English and Grammar, too... I just had the comma rules drilled in my head because I would always overuse my commas and my grade 9 and 10 english teachers lost it on me hahaha !

Wow, they never gave us those rules. They're cool.

The ampersand comes in handy for me... I work with the courts so I hear B&E a lot... Then there is F&E....(Fleeing and Eluding), it goes on and on.

Compared to Breaking and Entering, that actually is good shorthand for me. (whoops, spelling error... hahaha)

Using commas incorrectly or too frequently is way totally yeah way better than people who write one big huge freaking paragraph and there is no punctuation it it whatsoever then you never know where some sentences end and others begin or the people who use commas like the dot dot dot thing and its just this great big ruckus mess of a vomitous blob of commas and well I guess I made my point,,,,,,,

Carlita, Welcome to mingle. Hope you have a lot of fun.

I hardly ever use commas I usually rattle on and on and on

as a writer, you'd think i know this.

but as a writer who's slightly, grammatically retarded, i don't.

that dear friends.. is what my editor is for!

:p