Intelligibility is a basic vital component to any form of writing.
Whether academic, literary, journalistic or technical, if your jotted sentences don’t make sense, they ain’t worth the reader’s time.
And believe you me, in the current era of social-media-limited-attention-spans, not even if Hogwarts itself sent you a letter defying comprehension would you give it the time of day.
There are multiple factors which make a sentence intelligible.
Unfailing, however, in assisting writers in moulding sentences just as they have them in mind, is the unsuspected supreme member of punctuation: the comma.
Yes, the comma. The simple punctuation symbol which, when slitted appropriately here and there in sentences, becomes the sexiest thing there is to the more exacting readers.
Nope! The comma is not my fetish. So stop speculating.
It is, nevertheless, as a lover of mid-long sentences, the grammatical sign I’m the most fascinated by.
Why?
Commas, I find, have the invaluable ability to conjure mystery, to set the everlasting tone of the text, or to make long sentences feel appropriate as long sentences.
Take this sentence, for instance: ‘Princeton, in the summer, smelled of nothing, and although Ifemelu liked the tranquil greenness of the many trees, the clean streets and stately homes, the delicately overpriced shops, and the quiet, abiding air of earned grace, it was this, the lack of a smell, that most appealed to her, perhaps because the other American cities she knew well had all smelled distinctly. (from ‘Americanah’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie).
Now, do I agree, grammatically speaking, with where the commas have been placed in the opening of this very wildly acclaimed novel? Not really. Not entirely, at least.
It is undeniable, nonetheless, that the commas in that excerpt help to set a tempo which, in turn, helps to establish a pleasant “quiet-lake” type of feel, as if the reading tongue, rather than to cramp at the interminable opening, is induced into a pleasant lulling state, yet motioning yet engrossed.
A comma commands. It tidies. It irons out.
Why then, are so many people clueless as to how to use this wonderful sign, I hear you say?
Problem is, I don’t really have an answer to that. Only an incitation: get those commas in!
Achike Morgan
© Copyrights 2023 Achike Morgan.