This Modern Writer: Commas and Coliseums by David Wanczyk

One of my students told me the other day that she writes in commas.  I am serially guilty of over-punctuating, too, extending my thoughts beyond their logical conclusion. My sentences can wear out their welcome.  But writing, it could be said, is a lot about the proper placement of those commas, about the way we choose to qualify, complicate, clarify, accumulate. Words have to be placed; they have to have rhythm and pace; they have to wander; they have to be—like characters in a romance—cut off from each other, and reattached.

***

My great poetry teacher, William Stewart, used to tell us that he fell in love with language when he realized a simple statement about the weather could be reordered in nearly innumerable ways. On Sunday there may be thunder all through the region.  On Sunday, there may be, all through the region, thunder.  As a stormy college student, I thought I was learning an elementary lesson.  Now, though, I see the small difference in connotation that the reorganization can bring, and it can be hard to know where to put the thunder.

***

Another thing about Stewart. He kept his old wedding ring in his desk because he didn’t want to discount the love it represented.  Reordering doesn’t change everything.

***

A comma is democratic, allowing, as it does, a note of explanation or dissent at the end of a statement. With commas we can qualify.

A comma can help us complicate an over-simplification, though it sometimes makes us unnecessarily complicate what’s simply correct.

Somewhat unrelatedly, a misplaced comma cost Rogers Communications, a Canadian company, 2.13 million dollars.

(“Commas are often used to enclose parenthetical words and phrases within a sentence.”)

With commas we build up in stages the vague glee we see in the world, the seemingly ineffable, the pale green curve of light reclining on the low, Ohio hills.

***

In his desk, his old wedding ring he kept.

***

The comma helps those indecisive few among us show our ambivalence.  When I’m not quite sure of my idea, I offer another one as part of the same sentence. That way, I suggest how the different impressions exist for me, concurrently. The way they overlap each other, accumulating.

***

Just a half-stop for a quick story.  I had another professor who said he would fail me if I repeated a comma error while introducing a quotation.  Apparently I did not write in commas correctly.

He said, “C’mon, David.”

***

Here are some puns I’ve been trying to make use of: accommodating; comma sutra; correct punctuation will result in good comma.

***

My wife can’t remember having a comma lesson in school and neither can I, which leads me to believe that commas are just something we picked up along the way. I know there are Catholic school horror stories, involving Christ and comma-splicing and Sister Cecilia, but rigorous grammar instruction faded from the regular curriculum around the same time as duck-and-cover drills.

Comma use seems like one in a long line of skills we pick up from reading at an early age. Sadly, I’ve been able to tell which of my students were childhood readers and which weren’t.  I’ve been able to tell, sadly. . . Among those who were, Daniel sits with his head on the desk staring at his pants. He’s a so-so student, but he’s used to reading a book to pass the class-time, probably got through a whole lot of lap-reading in high school trig. His work has been polished in advance by dozens of old dog-eared things, read on the sly.

Elizabeth blushed when I said her sentences seemed like the work of someone who used to scour books, after bed-time, by flashlight. Her sentences plié; she writes in brush-strokes, imitating, without knowing it, everything she’s plowed through since the age of four when she used to curl up in the dog’s bed with Dr. Seuss, or maybe Henry James.

***

Because he didn’t want to discount the love it represented, he kept, in his desk, his old wedding ring.

***

My favorite group of words is: “Oakland Alameda County Coliseum.” Two syllables, four, two, four. It’s a terrific pattern, feels like it’s sprinting downhill. I always liked it as a kid, too. So perfectly arranged.

***

My wife and I argue about serial commas. I say they’re always necessary. She disagrees. The author, Lynne Truss, is on her side: “A passage peppered with commas—which in the past would have indicated painstaking and authoritative editorial attention—smacks simply of no backbone. People who put in all the commas betray themselves as moral weaklings with empty lives and out-of-date reference books.”

Lynne and Megan both like the following types of sandwiches: turkey, chicken, ham and cheese.

“The meaning changes,” I say.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says.

“Everything matters,” I say.

“Untrue,” she says.

What do I think of her argument? Eh, comme ci, comme ca.  I think she’s right, wrong or somewhere in-between.  One or the other.

“Is cheese its own sandwich?” I ask, exasperated.

“What?”

And while I know a whole lot of it matters, commas and otherwise, I don’t want to push it, and I don’t want to discount a certain excellent facet of our Sunday together in the low, Ohio hills. I full-stop.

David Wanczyk teaches English in Ohio and writes English in at least two (2) other states. He’s glad to be considered a modern writer (though he’s always fancied himself more of a pre-Raphaelite). David Wanczyk is not really sure what pre-Raphaelite means. But his work is online and available for reading at The Awl, Brevity, Catalonian Review, Defenestration, Defunct, JMWW, Miracle Monocle, Prick of the Spindle, Shaking, and Splitsider.