Thoughts on teaching punctuation and grammar

I had an interesting conversation with my wife over lunch, when she asked me to act as “editor” for some written materials she’s putting together for a women’s Bible study (that is, be “a second set of eyes” to proofread). In particular, she said she has a hard time knowing when to use a comma vs when not to (either by just not having any punctuation in that spot, or by starting a new sentence).

She was taught with the “put a comma where you’d take a breath” rule of thumb, which isn’t quite accurate, and I think I landed on why commas (and semicolons, by extension) are so confusing for a lot of folks: namely, people are often taught to think of punctuation as “stage directions” for speaking, when punctuation isn’t that at all. Punctuation is a markup language for organizing written-down thought, and while that organization does influence how people speak when reading the written-down thought, the “speaking out loud” part doesn’t (generally) influence how punctuation is to be used.

Viewed through that lens, it becomes a bit more clear how to use commas: since a sentence is a “unit of thought” (specifically, a sentence is generally one thought, and one thought is usually one sentence), commas are then used to separate individual sections or items within a single thought, which is why you put commas after each item in a list. So then the rule of thumb becomes something more like “if you need to clearly demarcate between two distinct items that are part of the same thought, that’s when you’d use a comma”.

A bunch of other comma usage shakes out of that (examples of each in parentheses):

• We put commas after items in lists to note that they’re distinct items, which I think makes a clearer case for the Oxford comma (“this radio station plays jazz, R&B, blues, and swing”)

• We put commas before direct quotes to distinguish between our own words and others’ words (Paul wrote, “God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.“)

• We also use commas when paraphrasing others, to distinguish our own words from others’ words (“Blessed”, said Jesus, “are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.“)

Anyhow, I guess what I’m saying is that I spent my lunch hour talking about grammar and punctuation with my wife, so clearly we’re both really fascinating people who live thrilling lives.