The comma makes me queasy.

The good news is that I don’t seem to have a problem with the rules of the apostrophe, quotation mark or period.

My misuse of this powerful little symbol has been known to stop me from clicking the publish button, and when I finally do, I can intuitively feel the punctuation police infiltrating my space.  I’ve chosen to rise above that fear (there are no punctuation police) and embrace those that don’t grade my paper out loud.

At least I know the difference between their, there and they’re.

When I was working with copy editors, a few years ago, it gave me a new appreciation for those brilliant souls that have absorbed the 21 punctuation rules of the comma.

I was surprised, during the second edit, that my punctuation wasn’t as bad as I thought.  In fact, a warm feeling swept over me, knowing that three of the rules would suffice.

With that said … I’ve decided that instead of taking the time to memorize the remaining 18 rules of the comma, I will commit to writing freestyle, hoping you’ll like me anyway.

If you want to test your “Rules of English” … check out The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation by Jane Straus. 

And what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it enough is easy enough without the comma.  — Gertrude Stein from Lectures in America