Junie's Writing Services (closed)

Tip: Becoming the Comma King

When writers start to write, they always seem to come across one of two problems: they either overuse commas, or they underuse them. Normally, I heard that it's easier to overuse these bad boys than it is to underuse them; however, I've noticed that's not always the case. Commas are a hard punctuation mark to figure out, but once you know all the rules to them, it can make your writing a heck of a lot easier to understand.

Before I get to that, let's backtrack here and understand why we need commas. Commas create a pause. If we didn't have commas, we'd never know when to take a brief pause while reading. Sure, there's periods, exclamation points, interrobangs (my personal favorites), semicolons, colons, and so many other punctuation marks that can create a pause, but they differ from commas as commas are used a lot more than those are. A few of the ways they can be used are in dialogue, coordinating conjunction, conjunctive adverbs, dependent clauses, introductory words (or at least, that's what I call them), and in lists. These are not all the ways commas can be used, but these are a few a the most misused ways I've seen commas being used (and have misused them myself).

Dialogue

Let's start with dialogue. Didn't expect that one, did you? I'm starting here for a reason though. It is SOO easy to tell if a Wattpad writer knows the rules of dialogue just by simply misusing commas. Crazy right? It's so easy to forget about commas though when it comes to dialogue because we usually end a piece of dialogue with the end of a sentence. That should mean that it ends with a period, right?

Wrong!

It's a common mistake though, one of which I am still going back with older works and am fixing up. If you're going to have a dialogue tag (I/he/she/they said, etc) before the closing quotation mark, replace the period of that sentence with a comma.

For instance:

"Huh," he let out. "Shrink, grab Nightshade and the bag. I'll take care of the sheep." (Sibs Weekend Pt 3 from The Story Expansion Garden).

Notice how before the dialogue tag, huh is followed by a comma. That is how it should always be. The only exception is when a character is shouting, being interrupted, or asking a question. In that case, normal punctuation before the dialogue tag, whether it's an exclamation point, interrobang, dash, or question mark.

Then, it will look something like so:

"I'm not a sheep; I'm a ram!" she shouted as she bowed her head and sprinted towards him.
(Sibs Weekend Pt 3/4 from The Story Expansion Garden).

That's all you really need to know about commas in regards to dialogue rules. Obviously, there are a TON more dialogue rules (there's a reason I had a teacher in high school tell me it's the hardest thing to learn in English...I'll disagree, but we all have our strengths and weaknesses), but this should truly help you improve your grammar in terms of dialogue a bit more.

Coordinating Conjunctions

Anyone a fan of FANBOYS? No? Yes? Don't know what it is? No worries. If you remember from a previous chapter—sentence structures—then you will know that coordinating conjunctions are just one of the many ways to combine two independent clauses. These words include the following: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, and So.

However, before using these words, you need to use a comma. These words are not powerful enough to pull two independent sentences together, which is why they need help from their mighty sidekick, the comma.

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT think that these words are powerful by themselves. Two independent clauses (as talked about in sentence structures) always needs help of some sort to pull them together. If these words are not used to combine two independent clauses, then you do not need to use a comma before the coordinating conjunction.