I've been reading indie books and reviewing them, and there have been at least three I've read in the past few months that have abused and terrorized (or outright neglected!) commas. What is up with that?
While I'm not a high school English teacher, and I do tend to ramble in posts at times (because I write like I think.... I'm much more careful when writing up research and such), I feel I have a fairly good understanding of the English language, commas included.
Is it that schools no longer teach grammar rules? I can attest to the fact that the school where I worked for many years (K-12) did not, in fact, do much teaching in the area of grammar. When I was in secondary school, English and Literature were two different classes. Now they are one, combined and shortened.
After reading this last book, I even looked up every reputable site I could find about the rules governing the use of commas to be sure I wasn't crazy and making up my own rules for those blasted things. I wasn't.
If I'm reading along, trying to enjoy a fairly interesting book, and I see a sentence like this:
Quote:
|
Joe said "we just received word, that we have to go to the store quickly to do, the next part of the job Sam."
|
I'm thrown off. I'm distracted by the missing commas as well as the misplaced commas. Because of those commas, the cadence of the sentence is wrong, and I'm left to try to discern meaning. All I really end up doing is proofreading it in my head, which takes my time and energy away from enjoying the story. And some of these books are getting 5 star reviews left and right, for the "awesome story" and "what a thriller" plotlines, and I just can't get past the writing.
Is this an insidious phenomena in my very own head? Anyone else noticing this?