Now, I realize that commas are probably the trickiest punctuation marks.* Periods are easy, and semi-colons are usually just periods for showoffs.** An apostrophe is easy enough to put in it’s proper place (dodging shoes). Question marks, exclamations, and even colons are pretty easy. But commas seem to mess everyone up. I’m not trying to cover all of the bases for commas here (although it wouldn’t take as long as you think). I just want to tell you why this one case is important.

In English, the position of each word in a sentence, as well as the position of each word in relation to the ones around it, plays an important part in shaping the meaning and grammar of the sentence. Take these two sentences for example:

A: Sometimes, when I’m feeling really spontaneous, I’ll combine coffee with chocolate milk because I’m crazy like that.

B: Farmer Joe went to market and bought a grain silo and a new combine.

Of course you know the difference between a combine and the verb “to combine,” but take the key word out of either sentence and substitute some nonsense like “wapfskrthdgu,” and you’ll still know what sort of word you’re looking at because of the way the sentence is constructed. This is the way our language works. And it is this function of our language that makes the serial comma not only useful but necessary.

One of the most notorious examples of an egregious omission of a serial comma is in the probably fictitious case of the writer who dedicated his first book “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.” Either this is a messiah complex that Barack Obama himself wouldn’t dare touch, or it’s just poor communication. “I like hinge, ball and socket and synovial joints.” You what? Remix. “I like hinge, ball and socket, and synovial joints.” Oh, OK, I might not know exactly what you’re talking about, but I know that for whatever weird reason, you’re into three types of joints.

You could make all kinds of arguments that the “and” does the job, that people know what you’re talking about, that for every sentence that could be ambiguous without a serial comma, there are three that would be perfectly clear either way. That’s fine, and I’m not arguing that with you. But I would submit that it’s kind of beside the point.

Imagine a world where the only people that can reasonably be expected to see anything you write or hear anything you say speak your language capably. Imagine a setting where there is rarely any reason to send a message across the world and where, if it gets there at all, you can expect it to take months. Picture a culture in which translators—and I’m talking about people; just forget about anything electronic—are so few and far between that they are almost considered supernaturally prophetic. If that sounds foreign and ancient, you can at least say it’s imaginable, and I think that’s a lot more than people a little while ago could say from the perspective of the times they lived in. We hear all the time about how much smaller the world is than it used to be, and it may be a marketing cliche by now, but it’s the truth. Anything you say or write can find its way around the world in seconds. More than ever, communicating in a way that is as clear and understandable as possible is a matter of consideration, not just education. In a world where many people could be scratching their heads to piece together what I say a word at a time, I don’t have the right to be autocentric enough to be lazy and unclear when I know better.*** This may sound like I’m overstating things, but I really believe that the human tendency to put the burden on the other person (and I’m as bad about this as anyone) is inexcusable. If you could make it easier, and it occurs to you, and you don’t, that is selfish.

Yes, I did just go from commas to soapbox chastisement that fast. The point is, this whole thing comes down to choosing to be as clear as possible any time we communicate. Sure, maybe it takes a little more education and thinking on our parts, and I’m just giving my opinion here, but I feel like the rest of the world deserves not just our clear communication but the acknowledgement by us that we don’t live in a world populated only by copies of ourselves.

* For the purposes of this piece, I’m considering the differences between en/em dashes and hyphens typographical in nature, or maybe usage-related, but not grammatical.

** The exception, if you’re interested, is when you separate items that include commas. Cities are the most common example: “I’ve lived in Orlando, FL; Virginia Beach, VA; and Redmond, WA.”

*** I want to stress here that for some people, grammar is a really tough thing, just like understanding taxes or businessy things is easy for some people and tough for me. I respect and appreciate that, and I don’t want to imply that people that just don’t know any better are being inconsiderate. People that don’t know the best way to communicate but could easily learn and turn down the chance? Yeah, that’s inconsiderate and lazy.

English, though? That, hopefully, is another story.

When it comes to facility with language, there are multiple levels. I’m not exactly a veteran teacher of English, but I did do my time with international university students, which gave me innumerable opportunities to observe language acquisition in progress. I haven’t performed an empirical study, and I’m certainly not an expert, but I am curious and fascinated, both of which help make me observant. I think of it like this*:

Level 1: This is the sort of language ability that lives with a kung fu grip on the 80-page phrase book and clams right up when the subject ventures beyond immediate tourist needs. At this level, one can say, with chances a little better than 50-50, “Those people are speaking _______.” You probably have this kind of ability with at least one foreign language. Please, thank you, and finding out where the bathrooms are. This is Korean for me. I can thank someone for something and identify the language by picking out the seyo at the end of every other sentence, but to even call my grasp on Korean “tenuous” is too generous by miles. At this level, one phrase at a time is mentally translated from the source language into the destination, and the words themselves are functional only as syllables in a larger construct.

Level 2: Here’s where the building blocks of the language start to gain some function. Words are broken out of the phrases in which they were learned, mixed together, and reused to make more basic, functional sentences. Instead of translating one phrase at a time, words start to factor in to the communication process. Translation is still way ahead of content in the thought process, but a Level 2 will begin sentences and halt in between words rather than pausing to remember an entire phrase or sentence and freezing if it doesn’t come to mind. This is French for me.

Level 3: Now we’re eating with utensils! Everything still starts in the source language and gets translated before it hits the mouth, but at this point, there is more of a flow, and content and translation are working together. Communication is beginning to be expressive of thoughts. Logic is starting to enter the formation of sentences: Level 3 speakers will begin to use words in situations in which the words are likely to be correct or appropriate, even if the resultant phrases are untested or unfamiliar. Level 3 speakers will begin to stumble over idioms where the Level 2 speaker never approached them in the first place. Interests, preferences, and unique experience will start to differentiate an individual speaker’s overall vocabulary. The tone of a person’s communication will start to appear at this level.

Level 4: Most native speakers older than seven or eight get a pass straight to Level 4. Translation rarely enters the communication process for non-native speakers at this point. Technical or highly academic terminology may still be met with the occasional “What does that mean?” moment, but if problematic individual words are defined, they don’t get in the way of the main point. Conversations are comfortable, easy, and personal. Personality comes through word choice, not just demeanor, and wordplay and humor are often appreciated if not actively engaged.

Level 5: I was describing this sort of interaction with language to a couple of coworkers earlier today. When language becomes a toy that you can pick up, marvel over, reinvent, transform, enjoy, and put back just the way you think it goes best, you are truly fluent. When your command of your native tongue is such that it gives you opportunity more than it restricts you, and you don’t have to think about whether you put that comma in the right place or spelled “paroxysm” or “deterrence” correctly.

I think most people, if you’re going to put any stock into my weird little scale, are not, or choose not to be, fully fluent, even in their native tongue. Now, every generation that’s ever lived has, I’m sure, looked around and decided that this was the generation when humanity would finally stupid itself to death. I have to get more perspective than just to compare the nerdy language books I’ve read in my life with MTV, 99% of the internet, and Dan Brown. There are people out there who know how to use their words. But doesn’t it seem like they really a bit more sparse than they ever have been? It seems like the loudest voices are choosing not to reinvent, not to push forward, not to delight or innovate or inspire.

And I’m one of them. I start way, way too many sentences with “so.” (Although that is probably the number one item on my writing hit list, and I’m getting better and better.) I put delineating walls between casual and creative communication. I’m too lazy to proofread beyond typos when I write. I take for granted the definitions that my stock of words has always had without giving thought to how they might be reapplied and reinvigorated.

But sometimes… Sometimes the light hits those toys just right, and they sparkle again. The tools are repurposed, see? Sometimes I remember how much fun it can be to paint with a mop, make lasagna in a crock pot, measure length with speaker wire because my tape measure’s gone, or write the word “BLUE” with a hot pink crayon. Other times I just mop the floor exactly the way it should be mopped with a tool that is just perfect for the job. I pick up the gifts I’ve been given, I turn them over, and I make the choice not to be any less fluent than the limits of my mind will allow me to be. There are still MacGyvers out there that will build impossibly beautiful castles out of nothing but dry sand in a way I’ll never match, but that doesn’t mean I have to be sidelined. It just means that greatness has been redefined. Again.

* Like many of my thoughts, these are equal parts ridiculous and extemporaneous and, as such, are subject to revision without prior notice.

“Look what she drew today.” She brings a picture into the room and he looks up.

The picture is mostly simple. Oranges and browns, the bumps and dips in the paper accented by gaps in the wax. The colors are not true. Reds, yellows. Single lines for long fingers. The people are all posed on the paper, a few of them wearing adhesive smiles, pasted under Wood’s expressionless Midwest eyes. Their hands are a knot of lines, holding each other. The house behind them is a modest afterthought, the childish freehand of its lines bleeding into the figures dominating the foreground. The grass is drab, the roof slanted on the top, making the house itself look off balance. These details are seen through the eyes of a childhood, and they do not reflect reality. In nearly every spare space is an object, scribbled with aimless scratching that makes it impossible to make out exactly what the thing is. These could be objects, or they could be mistakes, hastily covered.

Green shoots are climbing in the front of the house. They’re standing, dominantly tall, on the necks of blue and golden flowers, choking them. The disarray is nothing like the real beds of flowers in front of the house. These weeds are not reaching up and taking hold of the house, pulling it down to join them under the soil.
“Look, the trees are gigantic, too. They make the house look tiny. Look at the apples…”

They are swollen, bloated on the tree. They have grown large, but they will not fall. The tree’s branches are hanging on, and the fruit has grown too large, stayed too long. It is rotten on the branches, and it still will not fall. The tree is sagging toward the ground as if it’s drawn, but it will not let go. This is also untrue, and reality is much different, the tree nourishing its growth, standing tall in front of the even house.

“I think this is me and you here.” She’s pointing to a pair of figures that are looking straight ahead. There is nothing to distinguish them from the other figures on the page, all of which look identical, single black lines on white paper.

They look, and as they do, the faces in the picture begin to speak. Like the rest of the picture, the voices say nothing that sounds like reality. The house is falling, they say, in spite of their best efforts. The weeds are winning. The earth is hungry, and everything has forgotten how to fly. The figures in the foreground turn to look at the dozens of others behind them, and these figures pull themselves slowly from the page and begin to tell their stories, none of which are true, because they cannot be.

“They’re… us. They’re all us.” He can’t look away.

The slow, empty figures calmly walk away from each other, toward and over each other. She is here, at a stake, lighting the tinder herself. He is a ways away, carrying a doll by its hair, stacking the doll on an altar of others.

Knives. Huge, grinning teeth, dripping black wax on the page. In the middle of the page, they are there, holding hands, looking everywhere else. The figures spell out everything that would have brought an end to this house and all of the lives in the picture if it were reality and not the drawings of a darkly imaginative young girl. Every block in this tower they have built, every sacrifice, every effort has been a gift without a sender, an orphaned deed, unattached to love. They have held back absolutely nothing but themselves, they confess, and this destruction is not the way it is really ending.

“All of this should have been enough.”

The picture between them says all of this. There are dozens of figures. She is sacrificing her body again, clutching another burnt bone to put with the other relics she has collected for so long. He is carrying another doll by the hair; she has the torso, and they’re walking apart. He is turning a blind eye as the flames lick the shavings at the foot of the stake. The teeth of his empty smile are grotesque, leering, sharp. She is putting drops poison into her respect and submission. He is doubled over from the exertion of climbing up his altar to continue building it higher. Hands behind backs, bodies bleeding, faces smiling. A last creaking lurch of lumber, and the house is finally gone, the ground flat and finally, truly, undisturbed by its memory.