What does a comma do. I have refused them so often and left them out so much and did without them so continually that I have come finally to be indifferent to them. I do not now care whether you put them in or not but for a long time I felt very definitely about them and would have nothing to do with them.
As I say commas are servile and they have no life of their own, and their use is not a use, it is a way of replacing one’s own interest and I do decidedly like to like my own interest my own interest in what I am doing. A comma by helping you along holding your coat for you and putting on your shoes keeps you from living your life as actively as you should lead it and to me for many years and I still do feel that way about it only now I do not pay as much attention to them, the use of them was positively degrading. Let me tell you what I feel and what I mean and what I felt and what I meant.
No one has ever accused Gertrude Stein—her memory IS a blessing, dear reader—of having too few feelings when it comes to punctuation. I adore Stein’s remarks, rambles, thoughts, observations, and passionate recollections of her life lived with punctuation. Particularly the much-maligned comma. I always tell my writing students: “Gertrude Stein didn’t use commas because she said her readers knew when to breathe” (it’s true; see the block quote a little further down). But it’s probably more truthful to say that Stein enjoyed the adventure of the page and the sentence without direction, like not receiving a program for a theater or musical performance. Don’t spoil the arrangement for Stein: let her discover whatever is about to happen. But I also love how Stein describes the work of the comma, even while she is giving it a good bashing as being “servile”—after all, isn’t it nice, sometimes, to have someone or something be attentive to you? Someone to hold your coat? Bring you a cup of coffee? Put your shoes on? I think, in this hard life, we deserve a little ease. Especially in a college essay, or in a piece where clarity and organization are of utmost importance. As Rules for Writers gently suggests, “The comma was invented to help readers” (Diana Hacker, 266). All punctuation is about musical notation—how long we are pausing between our words, phrases, and sentences—and while the comma offers us a minor pause, it is a useful one. I wrote this about the comma:
Oh, the sweet comma. The pause. It sets apart phrases. It helps you list items, say names, dates, and places, and be clear and organized. It also lets your reader (and you) breathe. Read your work aloud, and notice your pauses. But don’t place a comma simply because you stopped typing.
Stein has more to say about the comma and, tellingly, she even indulges us with using a few commas as she does so. I think this is a lovely note to close on, because it opens the door to the pleasure of complicated sentences, and turns use away from use, and towards pleasure. After all, on the spectrum of use and pleasure, explicitly creative writing (essays, poetry, screenplays, short stories, novels, graphics) bends towards pleasure, and away from usefulness. So I will close this brief piece on the comma with Stein championing the complicated sentence, and the pleasures of forgoing the comma, even while using the comma, and showing that sometimes, you just need a sweet, minor pause:
A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath. It is not like stopping altogether has something to do with going on, but taking a breath well you are always taking a breath and why emphasize one breath rather than another breath. Anyway that is the way I felt about it and I felt that about it very very strongly. And so I almost never used a comma. The longer, the more complicated the sentence the greater the number of the same kinds of words I had following one after another, the more the very more I had of them the more I felt the passionate need of their taking care of themselves by themselves and not helping them, and thereby enfeebling them by putting in a comma.
Writing prompt: Write a prose poem/paragraph or lineated poem (written in lines) without commas. Observe what happens when you write without the comma. What other punctuation do you use? How do you replace the comma? Do your sentences shorten? Do they stay the same? If you choose to lineate your piece, do you use the poetic line/lineation as a comma replacement? Extra points for including a seasonal (it’s October) flower.
The Line Break 