Punctuation, Part 2

For this post, I will once again look over Rules for Writers, and address more aspects of punctuation that I struggle with.

Hannah. "Punctuation." 10/22/15 via Story

I read every section of the book on punctuation, and found nothing that I needed to work on outside of commas. This may sound vain or cocky, but I truly believe that outside of my comma usage my punctuation is pretty solid.

1. A common mistake I find myself making is adding commas after a coordinating conjunction, which, according to the section, "avoiding other common misuses of the comma" is a mistake.

2. Another mistake I find myself making is found in the section, "do not use commas to set off restrictive or mildly parenthetical elements," which I find myself doing frequently.

3. Another mistake I make is adding a comma after a phrase beginning an inverted sentence. This is because I confuse the ordinary sentence and inverted sentence, and I feel there should be a comma in both situations, while in reality only one requires a comma.

After editing....
I learned nothing new about my writing style. My struggle with commas is something I have been aware of. For this reason, noticing the comma errors in my paper after reading about commas rules was not surprising or new. I learned lessons regarding punctuation, but not anything new about myself as a writer.

Example 1: "For this reason it is important to know the author of Scandal Upends Toshiba’s Lauded Reputation, before directly analyzing the article and its strengths, and, it is also important to briefly discuss where the article is published."

In this example the comma after the and that is underlined is unnecessary, and violates the rule that there should not be commas after coordinating conjunctions. 

Example 2: One article that was written about this issue is titled, Scandal Upends Toshiba’s Lauded Reputation.

In this example the comma included before the title of the article is unnecessary, and violates the rule that says commas should not be used to set off mildly parenthetical elements.