The Comma Sense Practise safe text, use commas An acquaintance pointed out that last week’s post was too long. “How can you expect me t o read more than 2000 words when I now-a-days have the attention span of few-seconds-long Tik-Tok videos?” he asked with irritation, “ and only a long list of jobs involving unpacking at that, which would only invoke a series of sore memories?” I stayed quiet, something very difficult for me, chewing on my reply which incidentally deviated my attention to my aching tooth. But I know that the people who take out time to read my blog also read books, articles, essays and newspapers, don’t they? Yet, to humour readers like him, I shall punctuate my ruminations, actually quite literally, and keep it short and sweet today. When we speak, the pauses in our speech and the inflections in the tone make the purpose and meaning very clear. But for the written word, punctuation is the only aid for putting clarity in it. I am not a grammarian and it woul...