Use of the comma is something that will likely take me a really long time to master. I have a bad habit of creating run on sentences in my writing that can contain a confusing amount of commas or not enough commas to clearly get my message across. Something that When Words Collide that is helping me to realize is the use of the comma with standalone phrases. I often find myself unsure whether to inject a comma in my sentence. Now I’m more conscious of looking over the components of the sentence to see if they can stand alone as a basis to determine if I need a comma. I really like to use commas because they allow for a lot of a lot of information in a single sentence that can still flow well. Unlike in verbal communication where a comma cannot be spoken and speech must be modified or use verbal pauses and clarification in place of what a comma could accomplish in writing.
Something new I learned from the AP Stylebook was related to acronyms. Before reading more about punctuation I was under the impression that acronyms such as FBI, CIA or NATO are properly written with periods in between the letter such as “F.B.I.” This can be a tricky thing to remember given that a lot of times such acronyms like K.G.B. that are not pronounced as a word, like NATO, are often seen with periods separate the letters. However, according to the Stylebook all these acronyms should be without periods.
I thought that the acronym thing was interesting too. I'd always thought that it was imperative to have the periods in there. Now we can save ourselves the fractions of a second by skipping the periods, and use that time for something cooler later in the day.
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