The Comma

The comma crawled up from the bottom of the page and considered an appropriate destination. How about before a conjunction? Yes, that would be a sweet little spot to plant a pause. But wait—is that a dependent clause after the “and”? And won’t that be a problem? Many commas end up living their lives there—until an editor comes along and hits the deadly delete key. Ha, maybe this page won’t be edited. Maybe this page will become a safe haven for ill-placed punctuation. The comma sighed, knowing it had a duty to maintain a degree of grammatical integrity. With some resignation, the comma moved to a new location properly nestled before a conjunction that preceded an independent clause, and the surrounding words breathed a sigh of relief.

But what about all these dashes? And what about all these sentences starting with the words “and” and “but?” Would the page never be correct? And then a voice echoed from high above:

“Will you shut the fuck up? This is a graphic novel. It’s a COMIC BOOK. We don’t need to be so perfect.”

Ha, okay—fair enough. But the comma was still glad it had moved.