GoKawiilDid you used to watch Fawlty Towers? If so, you will surely remember the episode in which Basil Fawlty, played by the inimitable John Cleese, is anxious not to offend an incoming group of German guests who, he assumes, carry guilt about their nation's past. He instructs his staff, repeatedly and in increasingly frantic tones, "Don't mention the war!" His anxiety getting the best of him, he ends up goose-stepping through the dining room.
Friends, though our hearts are with our soldiers and the hostages, we need a distraction. In this blog post we will not mention the war! Instead, we will take ourselves to the other end of the spectrum of human significance to engage with grammar. Specifically, the essential and much-abused comma.
When I was a teacher, some students would hand in an entire page of writing with all their thoughts strung together by commas; not a period in sight until possibly the end. The run-on sentence is probably the worst abuse to which the comma is subjected.
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