ON COMMAS.
CAN picture the development of the misled reformer who introduced the comma into the languages of men. His laborious finger lost itself time after time among the elaborate pothooks of his generation; time after time ho declared in a hissing voice that script was a fiend and time after time he led back his wandered finger to the beginning of the long crude sentence and renewed the slow chant that divinely revealed the thoughts of his distant friend. Ho Lad little access to print and was bothered with the bad writing of his many correspondents, but whether he was Jew or German or French or a rather unlikely Englishman this
w itness sayeth not. He came to the end of a sentence and w as in the middle of the next before he realized it; adjectives tied from his interpretation and fifteen juxtaposed nouns out of a jolly earlier Rabelais puzzled him for nearly as many minutes, For years his correspondence exasperated him more and more, because being an energetic man in a generation that wrote epistles with gnato his intellectual interests and the number of his friends and consequently the volume of his letters increased yearly, till at length he arrived at old age and at a decision ; he would do something to break up the intricacy of sequent words, and where a natural pause occurred or where a natural inflection of the voice was required be would place a hieroglyphic indicating that the troubled reader could gather np the threads of what was past, and prepare at that point for change or for development. So written sentences were separated and colons and commas and fullstops brought order with them.
The origin of punctuation is really unknown. Apparently the Greeks and Romans bad some system by which they arranged their sentences but it can hardly have been in common use and in any case it was not the modern system. Punctuation as we understand it probably arose after the invention of print- ing and it did not arrive at its full development till the time of Shakespeare's early manhood. Apart from the logical necessity of such a system the chief reason for its develop. ment was probably the difficulty of reading quickly, and accordingly there was a time when every possible atop was of value. 1 believe that that time bee passed and that some of the ballast we have carried during the sail of centuries may
be thrown overboard. The fulletop and the colon and semi- colon are quite as indispensable now as ever because they signify an indisputable pause but the comma in far more than half of the places in which it is used expresses no pause, but only an inflection of the voice, and it is from these places that I would dislodge it. My reason for desiring to remove it in these cases is that a modern reader ie so trained and developed to quick reading that its presence is superfluous. When print was scarce and ill to read ; when a man who had read a few hundred books was the perfect bookworm; when the structure of language was little understood and when reading was a laborious exercise ; when as we believe thought itself was slow the comma that signified inflection justified itself by the assistance it rendered. Nowadays we are so far removed from these considerations that the printed word is more swiftly understood than the spoken.
It is possible to deny the distinction between the comma signifying an inflection of the voice and the comma signifying a pause, so let us test the denial by one or two simple illustra- tions
is, in my opinion, a genuine case. On the whole, the Russian Ambassador is not dissatisfied. This, however, should not bo regarded as a threat.
Not only are all these commas entirely superfluous but it would be decidedly bad reading if one paused in the slightest at the call of any of them. It is not pause but emphasis that is required in these cases, and punctuation can no more supply emphasis than spelling can supply accent or pronunciation; on the other band emphasis or good reading in itself includes and renders unnecessary a large part of our punctuation commaesque. There are places of course in which the comma though apparently superfluous serves a purpose of emphasis or of pathos or of indignation, and in such places it is indispensable for it reveals the tone of voice in which the writer desires to be interpreted, but these eases are few and are as a rule the afterthoughts of the masters only. Indeed they would carry more weight if they were less crowded. Ia books of grammar the distinction is made between logical and rhetorical commas and though the latter are few and important the former are many and often unnecessary.
A distinguished writer passed what was in his own opinion a well-spent forenoon in considering the question whether be should omit or retain a single comma, and I think he decided to leave it in. He spent the afternoon happily in reconsidera- tion of the same question and eventually decided otherwise. The simple fact that there was any doubt at all on the subject makes it certain that a moment's consideration of the general question of the necessity of commas would have sufficed, though of course the happiness of his forenoon and afternoon was in itself an achievement that one cannot grudge him.
It is significant that the legal profession is forsaking punctuation entirely. Untold wealth has been squandered over the interpretation of statutes and legal instruments the difficulties of which have been created by the presence of this parasite. You find it exasperatingly limiting the general application of a clause when clearly the intention of those responsible for its presence was to establish broad views; it shuts out thousands from the enjoyment of public services. It still flourishes in public Acta of Parliament but from the private Acts promoted by local authorities who find that puns. tuation creates difficulties instead of solving them it is being excluded. Their grudge at this tyrant has even extended rather ludicrously to the semicolon and the fullstop, so that in the middle of a section you will find a space and a capital letter where no stop occurs. I have no doubt however that this determined stand against punctuation is really a stand against the deceiving comma for it is difficult to imagine that any ambiguity could be caused by the presence of a colon or stop. I take the following bewildering example from a private Act which declares that "the Town Council may in connection with the electricity undertaking purchase provide sell let for hire and fix set up repair alter and remove dynamos lamps meters electric lines fuses switches fittings lamp-holders motors stoves conductors and other fittings machinery apparatus and things for lighting heating and motive power and for all other purposes for which electrical energy can or may be used and may purchase . . ."
As far as I know the distinction between commas that signify an inflection of the voice and those that signify a distinct pause has not been drawn elsewhere, and I believe it will stand examination. There is little doubt that the best writers find them a nuisance, and though at least one author of our generation does omit many of the commas that swarm on the pages of others he himself does not appear to be altogether consistent when dealing with these intruders. I have seen men write a page, filling in the semicolons and fall- stops as they wrote, and then I have seen them go through the page and sprinkle commas over it from top to bottom as one-scatters sand over seed. Surely what was so unnecessary in the writing could hardly be required so manifold in the reading! One cannot daily with colons and fullstops in this fashion, and though it cannot be said that all commas can be filled in as writing proceeds it can certainly be said that many of them are as little required in reading as in writing. The omission of commas to the extent I have indicated would be at least a simplification of style and in my opinion would solve more questions than it would raise. As an illustration of this let me refer to the subject of parenthetical brackets. These flourished everywhere in the eighteenth century ; they decayed in the nineteenth and in the twentieth they are moribund. Good company has deserted them and has returned to the comma or to the little more explicitness that often makes up for both. If they ever were of assistance their function ripened and decayed till the language rebelled against them, and they survive now only in a few stereo. typed positions. It is at least probable that the fate of commas will be somewhat similar and that the next few generations will dispense with the superfluous half of them that we still use.
In this short article I have used twenty-three commas, and I am satisfied that neither the expression of the written para. graphs nor the sound of the sentences when read is obscured or hurt by the omission of any that at the first glance may appear to be lacking. The day of slow and laborious reading is past, and although no punctuation will ever make any two persons read and pause and inflect exactly to the same tune there is still room for some simplification of pointing that will bring practice and theory nearer each other. A. S.
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