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Very interesting...

Emily, do you emphasise phrase boundaries in music?

gc

On reading this, I can't help but remember Phonetic Punctuation by Victor Borge; I hope that is not what you mean when yousay you speak in commas.... :> How funny... I suffer from comma paranoia too! : ) Come to think of it, I speak in commas, too. Uh oh, paranoia sets in. Should the first sentence have had a comma after "paranoia"? So that it agreed with the second sentence? Or should I omit the comma in the second sentence? And are all these sentences ending with question marks appropriate? Should I be stating more and questioning less? Is this a reflection on me, or on my writing? Oh dear, was that last comma necessary, or merely decorative? The ultimate in comma paranoia for me happened once in my work when the general counsel of my agency was reviewing something I wrote. He was taking out commas all over the place. He finally explained to me the reason. He had previously practiced law in England. There had been an important case (not his) involving interpretation of a contract, and the House of Lords, in reviewing the case, had misinterpreted the significance of a comma. So, after that, he simply wrote without them and was proceeding to make my document conform to his practice. Huzzah, for Strunk and White! Tom's story reminds me of what I was taught as a kid in school. Someone wrote a will in which he left all his money in equal amounts to A, B and C. The judge ruled that A got 50% and B and C each got 25%. If the will had read "in equal amounts to A, B, and C," each of them would have gotten one third of the money. Such is the importance of commas. The panda bear eats shoots and leaves.

Watch as the comma transform this benign vegetarian into a ruthless killer:

He now eats, shoots, and leaves.

My philosophy is write however you want as long as there's no ambiguity. The panda sentence would work either way, since everybody knows once they start shooting they don't leave. Greetings,
in England, that joke has a more Freudian interpretation.
Cheers,
Buri That Strunk and White was mine!