Punctuation matters

And BP Plc hopes the Texas Supreme Court agrees. An article in the Insurance Journal explains:

BP argues the drilling contract skipped a needed comma, and that the omission either granted access to coverage or created ambiguity that triggered an exception. Under Texas law, an ambiguous insurance contract would be interpreted in its favor, BP contends.
The clause in the drilling agreement reads that BP, its subsidiaries and workers would be “named as additional insureds” in Transocean’s polices [sic] “except Workers’ Compensation for liabilities assumed by [Transocean] under the terms of this contract.”
BP contends that because there isn’t a comma after the words “workers’ compensation,” this leaves open coverage liability for oil discharged from the well. Insurers could have inserted “standard language” to restrict coverage and “cannot rewrite the policies to add those restrictions now,” BP said.

I like cooking my family and my pets

As the unpunctuated list in my headline shows, commas matter. But people are often vague about the rules for using them.

One persistent myth is that you should add a comma wherever you would pause for a breath when speaking. The trouble with this theory is that it depends on the reader knowing when pausing for a breath will benefit the meaning.

Pauses and punctuation (not just commas) are related. Both contribute to the meaning of whatever is being heard or read. But you can't depend on one to tell you how to do the other.

Save your family and pets. Learn the comma rules, and make your meaning clear.

Comma corruption starts early

There’s an outrage in my son's reading book.

'I am going to get some nuts, today,' said Mother Bear. (Beverley Randell. Baby Bear Climbs a Tree: Story Books Level 9, p4.)

That comma after 'nuts' is completely unnecessary. It's not a serial comma. It's not a comma between clauses. It's just plain wrong.

They're already filling my son’s head with dangerous nonsense, poor mite, and he's only in Year 1. We were doing our reading at home last night, and when he got to 'nuts' he gravely told me, 'I've got to take a breath now.'

Passed between generations
This travesty is being passed from one generation to another. I remember as if it were yesterday. I was in Primer 1, and kind Mrs Purdey was teaching us about punctuation. 'Put a comma wherever you want to take a breath,' she said.

Some of us breathe more often than others, and Beverley Randell must have been for a jog before she wrote about Mother Bear. Commas are there to separate clauses, to separate introductory phrases, and to separate items in a list. And that's it.

A nail in the coffin
Put commas elsewhere, and there you have it - the rot sets in: another nail in the coffin of correct punctuation in the 21st century. The correctly used comma will go the way of the apostrophe.

And he’s only age five! It's a tragedy.

(PS: Aside from the comma, this is one of the nicest books my son has brought home. Grammar isn’t everything! We just don’t want it to get in the way of a good story.)