Charles Dickens is a prime example of a writer who punctuates by ear. Dickens was famous during his lifetime for the readings he gave from his work, and I suspect that an enterprising forensic scholar, using Dickens’s commas as a guide, could develop equipment that would measure the author’s lung capacity by having an actor read aloud from his books. We know that Dickens got paid by the word (writers still do), a fact that is often used to explain his prodigious output, but I think he might have collected a bonus for punctuation. Dickens was especially fond of inserting a comma between the subject and the predicate, one of the few things that the two modern schools of punctuation agree is a mistake. You can barely read two pages of Dickens without being stopped by something like this, from Nicholas Nickleby: “But what principally attracted the attention of Nicholas, was the old gentleman’s eye. . . . Grafted upon the quaintness and oddity of his appearance, was something so indescribably engaging . . .”
By modern standards, these thudding commas are offenses for which Dickens ought to be sent to study with Mr. Squeers. They are no doubt intended to give a lift to the voice, a pause as the writer, reading aloud (if only inside the reader’s head), injects a bit of suspense. “The first house to which they bent their steps, was situated in a terrace of respectable appearance.” I know it was the fashion then—but so were bustles. These big-ass commas are often inserted between the verb and the object as well. The following is from a letter that Dickens wrote in 1856: “She brought me for a present, the most hideous Ostrich’s Egg ever laid.” Because of the comma, the sentence actually begins to misread as if the pronoun were the direct object—“She brought me for a present”—before resolving itself into the true direct object: “the most hideous Ostrich’s Egg ever laid.” Obviously, none of this is meant to suggest that Dickens is overrated. His commas are a matter of historical record, and so much of Dickens is dialogue. And tempted as I might be to mess with Dickens’s commas if I were copy-editing him (which would be a great pleasure), I don’t let them interfere with my enjoyment of, say, Mr. Boffin, in Our Mutual Friend, or the Infant Phenomenon, in Nicholas Nickleby. I can’t help but think that the way we punctuate now is the right way—that we are living in a punctuation renaissance—and we can at least learn from Dickens not to abuse the comma by using it to separate the subject from the verb or the verb from the object.
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Since its invention, punctuation has grown and developed and been subjected to various theories and practices, like medicine or millinery. Herman Melville was either a spectacularly ham-handed punctuator or a victim of the copy-editing conventions of his time. Or both. Here is an example from White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War, first published in 1850:
“Often I have lain thus, when the fact, that if I laid much longer I would actually freeze to death, would come over me with such overpowering force as to break the icy spell, and starting to my feet, I would endeavour to go through the combined manual and pedal exercise to restore the circulation.”
There are plenty of funky things going on in this sentence. Why would Melville break up the phrase “the fact that”? He often puts a comma before “that.” It’s tempting to think that he had it mixed up with “which.” Melville was punctuating for cadence, giving suggestions for how to read aloud, but his commas, by modern standards, are more like obstacles than aids to reading, and provide excellent material for deconstruction.
One test for whether you need commas to set off a group of words is to see whether the sentence will stand without the phrase or clause between the commas.
“Often I have lain thus, when the fact would come over me with such overpowering force as to break the icy spell . . .”
What fact? It makes sense only if you already know what “the fact” is that broke the icy spell. Of course, this example has been contaminated, because we’ve read the full sentence and we know about the death grip. But if you came to the sentence fresh it would not make sense unless you knew which fact came over White-Jacket (he might freeze to death) to move him to action. If the clause is integral to the meaning of the sentence, it should not be set off by commas. It is restrictive, that intimidating word wielded by grammarians in the attempt to fend off commas. (People think we live to put commas in, but it isn’t so.) A phrase is restrictive if it tightens the meaning, if it draws an invisible belt around which fact, out of all the facts in the universe, pertains.
So here is the sentence repunctuated (in part):
“Often I have lain thus, when the fact that if I laid much longer I would actually freeze to death would come over me with such overpowering force as to break the icy spell, and starting to my feet, I would endeavour to go through the combined manual and pedal exercise to restore the circulation.”
I automatically treated the comma after “death” as one of a pair (with the one before “that”) and took it out. Commas, like nuns, often travel in pairs. Perhaps Melville (or his copy editor) thought the sentence needed a comma after “death” so that one wouldn’t read “death would come over me.” But the comma after “death” separates the subject from the verb—a cardinal sin. It’s as if Melville had flung commas like darts while riding a swell at sea, and they went wide of the mark. He didn’t need a comma after “death.” Melville’s word order (syntax) ensures that the parts of the sentence that belong together stay together.
If he had to have two commas, the following might have been more acceptable:
“Often I have lain thus, when the fact that, if I laid much longer, I would actually freeze to death would come over me . . .”