What is it, with students and, with commas?

Are commas, so difficult to control, that these people, these otherwise normal speakers, of English, have no choice but, to channel their inner Shatner, when they sit down to compose, a formal argument? 

Comments

[Scott K-not-Kaufman(n)]

The people demand samples/examples!

Or at least I do.

[Mike S]

Scott, you might take a look at Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences. It's a remarkably concise and well organized approach to common sentence errors, including comma usage.

I imagine you've already got some of your own strategies for helping students with commas, as most of us do. But I've found this newish book very useful for some of the comp classes I've taught recently.

[Scott K-not-Kaufman]

I can't say as it would be useful as a classroom guide, but I think you'd enjoy Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero-Zolerance Approach to Punctuation.

...see also the Grades 1-3 study aids by the same author:
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference! and The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage without Apostrophes!

[Sisyphus]

Doesn't Gertrude Stein have some bit about commas being evil because they are the mark of the bourgeois mind? Perhaps they're just exposing their own class positions here.

Or? Like, alternately? they all? talk like this? but they know? you can't have? like eighty million? question marks in a sentence? So they put in commas? like, instead. Yew knew, dewde?

[Luther Blissett]

It's not as funny an explanation, but they probably use commas incorrectly because they don't know how to use them correctly. That's because either (1) they know but not to the extent of automaticity and don't bother to proofread; (2) or they don't know.

[Karl Steel]

I imagine it's because they were told to put a comma in wherever they paused.

[SEK]

Sadly, I think Sisyphus nails it: since their tone is almost uniformly subservient in office hours and such---what with us holding The Keys To Their Future---they probably internalize those questions and turn 'em into commas.

Scott-Not-Me, I've actually got a few exercises adapted from Eats, Shoots & Leaves, but there's only so much time I can spend on that. (For instance, I've done office hours Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and I have another batch tomorrow and Tuesday. I'm doing all I can, but one day---hopefully soon---I'll have a job in which I have other responsibilities, and won't be able to make up the general deficit through sheer force of will and abundant office hours. (And I'll ask the student who inspired this if I can post an actual sample. This conversation, such that it was, happened in office hours Friday, and when I told him his paper sounded like it was being recited by William Shatner, his response was: "This is something, that you might, put, on your, blog, is it, not?" So he might be amenable to me posting the actual bit.) (And the reason my student's thinking about blogs is because he and his classmates all have one this quarter, so they've started to think like bloggers.) (God help us all.)

Mike, I wish I could say I had some surefire something, but I don't. The thing about college freshmen is that they don't all have the same problems. With high school kids, you see a number of students whose difficulties are familial, inasmuch as they've had roughly the same set of teachers teaching roughly the same curriculum for four years. With college freshmen, you have a jambalaya of syntax missteps and empty content that can't be tamped down with a single method. Every quarter's like a triage tent for the English language: I look around, see what I can do in class that'll help the majority of the students, then do what I can for the outliers in office hours. It's not an ideal solution, but I don't think there is one.

Luther, I think it's a combination between what you and Karl said: they think they know where to put them because they've been taught to put them where they pause. Only, you know, that's not, like, where commas go, you know?

[Adam Roberts]

I blame Dickens. 'Now, what I want is, facts.'

[ajay]

AR: but that's grammatical - as you can clearly see:

"Now, that which I want exists, O facts."

[Luther Blissett]

Another excellent grammar book that bridges Warriner's and rhet/comp is C. Beth Burch's *Rhetorical Grammar*, which covers everything from "What is a noun?" to "What is antimetabole?"

[Rohan Maitzen]

What I can't understand is why they struggle so much with apostrophes. I'm willing to grant that there are subtleties to the use of the comma, but there are so few places where an apostrophe is correct--why do they plunk them in all over the place? I thought I'd solved the whole "its" / "it's" thing by pointing out that "it's" is a contraction and contractions are not acceptable in formal writing, so "it's" should simply NEVER appear in an assignment...but still, there it is. And they keep using apostrophes to form plurals...

I'm doing all I can, but one day---hopefully soon---I'll have a job in which I have other responsibilities, and won't be able to make up the general deficit through sheer force of will and abundant office hours.

That's exactly right: you set boundaries because you have to! I am more likely now to send students to online resources and the university writing center, and I freely hand out the miscellaneous writing texts I get sent as unwanted exam copies. I knew I was reaching my limit once a few years back when a student, responding to a comment about subject-verb agreement, asked, "What's a verb?" There's only so much we can do and still take care of our other responsibilities. A number of people in my dept have also been experimenting with the theory that they'll learn these rules if they see actual consequences--consequences that matter to them, that is. It's infuriating to correct the same writing errors over and over, but if the assignments don't fail because of them, there's some logic to the students investing their time elsewhere, like on their math midterm, where basic errors may cost them the course. So in some contexts we use a "three strikes and you're out" policy--three or more errors per page from a specific list and the paper gets an F. I allow a rewrite under these conditions; only the 'countable' errors can be changed. I do find that has a motivating effect on students who otherwise seem to be pretty happy with a C of some kind.

[Brandon]

I will confess that commas are my grammatical achilles heel. I will invariably put them where a natural pause for breath would occur rather than where they should go. It drives my fiancee crazy when she proofreads my papers.

[Emma]

I'll readily admit to being madly in love with commas, but not because I like using them as a pause sign. Rather, I tend to write run-on sentences with multiple subordinate clauses in which commas mark the end of the current clause.

Two things have helped: massive self-editing, in an attempt to become a better writer, and having a Classical Greek tutor who quizzing her students on the names and uses of subordinate clauses. If all else fails, you could always go the way of my Greek tutor and make commas too much of a pain in the arse to use. The only side effect is a temporary hatred of Plato.

[Megan]

Exactly what Brandon said. I write what I'd say and I put the commas where I'd breathe. I'm trying to do better. Most posts I go back and take some out.

But yes. They are very difficult to control.

[kvond]

Contemporary comma use is simply the line-break of poetry, imported and transformed, due to the immanent musicality of the spoken word, usurping from the objectivist/journalistic dogma of the "clare et distincte" an uncertain power, albeit largely by unconscious subjects. It is best to wipe out this musicality, wherever one sees it.

- Gradgrind :), :), ;).

[j.s. nelson]

I read this sentence today: "I call a spade, a spade, and I call an idiot, an idiot."
I like to read it like a line from a call and repeat type song.

I call a spade! (A spade!)
I call an idiot! (An idiot!)
I don't know how.. to use.. a comma! (A comma!)

[David]

I must confess that I don't understand all the criticisms of the pause=comma theory. What's wrong with that, at least as a general guideline? If it causes you to put too many commas in your sentences, then you're talking very strangely.

[Vulture Breath]

Your example could have very nearly been lifted from the New Yorker.