This will be a commaless blog post.

I aspire to write with more flow as one of my writing ticks is a tendency to hedge. One way to avoid this tendency is if I refrain from starting complex sentences with subordinating conjunctions. And of course I can remove the odd comma where it would strictly speaking be required. I can will myself in situations like this to not be lured into adding commas after the word “course” and the phrase “strictly speaking” in the previous sentence.

I have in mind to run this writing activity with my students noting that many of them would benefit from more commas as opposed to fewer. This reminds me of the two general kinds of grammar errors when it comes to writing complete sentences. The first is the run-on sentence or comma-splice. This error usually happens when two independent clauses are incorrectly joined or are missing a coordinating conjunction. The other kind is the sentence fragment. This error is more prevalent among ESL students as they are less sensitive to the “sound of” correct language which is better approximated with the run-on errors more common to native speakers.

[There should be a better connection between the paragraph above and below. I will leave the post half-finished as this is in line with the focus of this post and my commitment to just plain write more this year and not let incompleteness hold me back.]

Flowy writing moves and swirls with purpose. It lists in twos instead of threes and is less fastidious with rules. Good academic writing minimizes comma use. Bad academic writing draws attention to itself in the way fish becomes less enjoyable to eat when it’s filled with tiny bones. Unnecessary commas are like tiny finish bones.

Stark prose writers such as Hemingway or McCarthy also make do with fewer commas. Perhaps the analogy to describe their writing is that of a lurching steam engine that picks up speed and is unafraid to ignore the clacking of the rails and the vibrating of the bolts that a hedger such as Nabokov or Emily Bronte might be more tempted to address. Their styles are different. The Brontes followed 19th-century conventions; Nabokov was in a league of his own but the flow they all achieved is more akin to the pirouetting of a fine figure skater where the pivots and spins remain purposeful because they are empowered through singular momentum. (I don’t think Nabokov makes extensive use of the semi-colon.)

Academic writing is characterized by greater phrasal density and fewer clausal dependencies. I feel that generally good writing is phrasally rich. Having recently completed Nabokov’s Lolita and now halfway through his autobiography I remain impressed by how dense yet purposeful his prose is. He pirouettes with flare giving attention to each digit of each limb on his skating sentence. His insights are precise and novel. He is unafraid to use commas unsparingly. But then his writing is fine. Very fine.

Perhaps I can wield my commaless clauses cudgelly to creatively affect reactions in my reader (Nabokov likes alliteration). My wrist grabs the last word from the previous sentence and rotates and slams down the next sentence. Sentence becomes sentences. Sentences accelerate to build momentum and speed. Speed’s rumble and rattle chug along the tracks borrowing from my McCormack writing analogy above. The tracks lengthen ahead and pulling my meaning forward. Forward. Forward. Forward. And how do I pirouette from here? How can I effectively transform this analogy into another while preserving coherent momentum? To fly and shed the strictured guide of steely convention. Up…