I admit that commas flummox me. They feel unduly fussy to me and so when in doubt I leave them out which is probably not a great strategy. And so I’m always interested in anything that can help me use them more effectively, say these posts by English prof Ben Yagoda over at the New York Times’s Draft blog: “Fanfare for the Comma Man*” and “The Most Common Comma Mistakes.”
* Love the correction for this post: “An earlier version of this article misstated the length of time E.B. White wrote for The New Yorker as five centuries.”
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Ha! I love that correction too–thanks for sharing it!
I myself am rather fond of writing comma-rich dependent clauses…that I then have to firmly squelch in my final drafts.
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