Are Commas necessary?

No not really.

Microsoft recently release a study of documents written on computers running Windows software. One of the big finding is that too many people use too many commas in their writing.

That doesn’t answer the question of where they got the documents and where they store those documents. They say there is no personally identifiable information that would tie the document back to the writer. What if the document is a personal letter with the writer’s name and address in the letter or even passwords and login information. Too many companies have been hacked lately, Microsoft could have a very incriminating letter you wrote in their data bank waiting to be hacked and that letter held for ransom or that letter put out to the world destroying your life.

Back to commas. The way the article was written I interpreted it too mean that the majority of people (that means over 50% of the writers) use too many commas.

The article also said that too many writers don’t use commas when they should. Again, (should a comma be after again? There’s a 50/50 change it shouldn’t be there.) I took this to mean that over 50% of the writers don’t know where to put commas.

The article did not say what set of rules they used to judge where commas should be placed. In America there is no set standard. I’m sorry grammar Nazis, there are no set rules and you’re just making them up and calling everyone else stupid for not using your set of rules. If Microsoft used the Chicago manual of style then you would have a comma after the item, in a serial string of items, that comes before the conjunction. If they used the APA style manual you do not put a comma before the conjunction. Comma usage varies a lot more than that in different style manuals.

Scribendi just had a email newsletter that demanded that you must have a comma after each item in a series including after the item before the conjunction. Then they mention the APA style handbook without telling you that the APA demands no comma before the conjunction. The APA is used by many magazines.

There was a court case where a woman (sister 1) sued her sisters. Her mother’s will said the estate should be divided between sister one, sister two and sister three. Sister one argued that she should get half of the estate since there was no comma between sister two and sister three. Besides sister one quit her job, paid her own money to help her mother in her last years, where the other two sister didn’t do diddly. The judge went with the way he was taught in school and they all got one third. I will let you decide if justice was done. Nothing is as simple as I wrote above and leave the writing of wills and contracts to specialist.

Go with the Harvard style of commas for items in a series and put a comma after the item before the junction.

Stay strong, write on, and don’t use so many commas.  Professor Hyram Voltage