When it comes to writing, I am the first to admit that I am not the best at it. This isn’t just for one aspect of writing either. I feel this way when it comes to my writing style, voice, vocabulary, and grammar. When it comes to grammar, what I have learned about my way of writing is that commas are basically my best friend. As you will probably notice in this blog alone, I use a large amount of commas, even if there is a better way of phrasing a sentence. I am not sure the reasoning for using them so much, but I believe it is because depending on their placement in the sentence being used, they make it sound better. This of course is in my non-professional opinion. For example, last Thursday we did an exercise in class that tested our grammar skills. In one problem, it asked for us to find two separate ways of how different grammar tools placed into the sentence changes how it reads. The phrase given was “A woman without her man is nothing.” The first response I put on it was “A woman without her man, is nothing.” The second response I put was “A woman, without her, man is nothing.” The first response I believe is perfectly fine, but I also believe the second one is too. Later during the class, I was told that the second way of writing this was incorrect and that it should actually be “A woman; without her, man is nothing.” See, for me, I would never have thought to put a semi-colon instead of a comma. This is due to the fact that I typically avoid semi-colons all in general. I do not completely understand how or why they are used. So because of this, I use commas like crazy. Another example on the grammar worksheet that we received on Thursday was the love/breakup letter. While going through both of them, the best ways I could figure out to make them work was to use commas. For the most part, about eighty percent of what I added was a comma. I didn’t even attempt to use anything else besides those. While this strategy worked for the most part, it is also the reason why I struggled with it as much as I did. Although commas are ok to use, I believe I use them way to often and I want to be able to change that. Commas do make papers sound better and they typically work for classes like history, math, science, and any other general education class. As for English class, although commas usually work, it would be so much better if I could replace some of them with other things such as semi-colons. This is also especially true if I want to someday teach a high school English class. It would be beneficial if I could teach students other ways than just commas to make their writing better. Although I want to remain friends with commas, I just need to stop making them my best friend.
