How Can You Tell if a Comma Is Unnecessary?
A children’s book called Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference! is about the power of punctuation. The title might be puzzling, but one glance at the cover reveals the joke: It’s about pandas. It also gives an example of how an unnecessary comma can completely
alter a sentence’s meaning. The comma after “eats” turns it from a panda “eating bamboo shoots and leaves” to a panda performing three separate actions: eating, shooting, and leaving. Commas are a bit like salt in the kitchen — necessary, but too much can ruin the whole dish. Superfluous commas...
