Business Writing With Buzz

In her book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss explains why we need commas:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

'Why?' asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

'Well, I'm a panda,' he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'

The sad truth is that we can't do without commas. And, to make it worse, while there are some set rules about how to use commas, writers and editors do not always agree about some of their other uses. This ambiguity means that people tend to abuse and misuse their commas.

Here’s what I mean:

All the children who love pizza will be there on Friday.

This means that only those children who love pizza will be there on Friday. Compare this to:

All the children, who love pizza, will be there on Friday.
 
All the children will be there on Friday and, by the way, they love to eat pizza.


How to use commas - lists

At school, the first use we learn for commas is to separate items in a list. For example:
 
When I go shopping I buy shoes, dresses, coats and gifts.

Sometimes, particularly in the US, we include a comma before "and" as in “dresses, coats, and gifts”. This is called an Oxford comma, or serial comma, because it was used by editors, proofreaders and printers at Oxford University Press.

In Australia and the UK it’s unusual to use an Oxford comma, but feel free if you think it adds clarity, particularly if the last two items in your list are not separate words.

For example, if we write, "I love margarita, meatlovers and ham and pineapple pizzas”, it is not clear if the last pizza is a single ‘ham and pineapple’ pizza or two pizzas: a ham pizza and a pineapple pizza. In this case, we could add the Oxford comma to say, “I love margarita, meatlovers, and ham and pineapple pizzas”.


How to use commas with adjectives

Commas in a list of adjectives are not always needed. As a guide, if you can change the order of the adjectives, use a comma. If not, there’s no need for a comma. Here’s what I mean:

The report was long, boring and too detailed.

You could shift the order of the adjectives:
The report was boring, long and too detailed.

My daughter has beautiful blonde hair and clear blue eyes.
As we can’t change the order of these adjectives, we don’t need commas.

How to use commas – to add extra information

Sometimes we add extra information to our sentences to make them more interesting. For instance:

Our business, the world’s largest producer of eggs, is opening a plant in Rio.

We could easily remove the information about ‘world’s largest producer of eggs’ without changing the meaning of the sentence.

How to use commas to join two clauses together

Use a comma to join two clauses together. These are two separate parts to a sentence joined by conjunctions such as and, but, so, or, yet, but could be separated by a full stop. For example:

I love eating pizza, but I don’t like anchovies.

This could also be written as:

I love eating pizza. But I don’t like anchovies.

There is a move away from using these commas, so if you feel the meaning is clear without a comma, go for it.

How to use commas after introductory statements

There is also a trend towards not using commas after introductory statements, which is fine if the meaning is clear. Whichever option you choose, be consistent. One of the biggest errors I see when proofreading is inconsistency – one sentence has an introductory statement with a comma and the next does not.

Here are some examples:

At Proof Communications, we help our clients to win more business.

On 5 September 2011, we will be holding a party with hundreds of guests.

You could write either of these sentences with no comma.

How to use commas around ‘interrupters’

Sometimes, to add emphasis, we use an interrupter in our sentences. These always need commas before and after:

She was, however, feeling sad about missing out on the pizza.

I asked her, reluctantly, if she would get take-away.

How to use commas: the last piece of advice

Commas give us a pause in our writing. They give us room to breathe. If you’re not sure when to use a comma, read your writing aloud. You’ll hear the need for a pause.
If you suffer from comma confusion, let us know now.