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I came across a great article in the Times a few years back. It was behind a paywall then but now it’s available for us freeloaders to see.
Giles Whittell wrote a brilliant article on why we should be looking carefully at our use commas, and he demonstrates this by writing the whole piece – without a comma.
A brave man. Here is it is.
Over the years I’ve highlighted one or two punctuation guides which I’ve found useful in my writing. I’m not a stickler for punctuation rules, but I do believe that you have to understand them before you decide to break them. I’ve spent a few days reading through some of my older pieces of work to see it’s changed over the years (I’ve got a cold and I’m bored – leave me alone), and I’m pleased to see that there is much less that I’d change about my earlier work than I thought. I think my sense of rhythm has improved, and I’m a lot more ruthless in cutting out needless fluff than I used to be. Best of all though, I use a lot less commas.