This chapter is very interesting. Truss does an excellent job of relaying the importance of the comma. After reading this selection, I can say that personally, I abuse commas. Yes, it's true. What I found myself thinking was, "Wow, Truss is right. Without the correct use of punctuation, we would really have trouble communicating what we want others to understand." As seen in the last example Truss gave, sometimes if we don't punctuate correctly, people take our dialogue totally different. It's a dangerous area.
I feel that comma's are one of the most important, if not the most important part of speech. All of the information was presented very clearly in my point of view, however rule # 6 threw me for a loop at first.
6. Commas that come in pairs.
"This is where comma usage all starts getting tricky. The first rule of bracketing commas is that you use them to mark both ends of a "weak interruption" to a sentence - or a piece of "additional information." The commas mark the places where the reader can - as it were - place an elegant two-pronged fork and cleanly lift out a section of the sentence, leaving no obvious damage to the whole."
This was all well and good to this point, until I read the example: "The leading stage director, Nicholas Hytner, has been appointed to the Royal National Theatre." In my confusion I had to re-read the text trying to make sense of what Truss said. I knew that if Nicholas Hytner wasremoved, the sentence wouldn't make sense. However, the second point that Truss talked about brought it all together; the sentence could have a totally different meaning if the commas were indeed removed. I'm not sure that I totally understand all of this rule but I know that it's coming. Slowly but surely.
I hear that! I tend to abuse commas almost obsessively because I have so many ideas that I want to cram in one sentence. It is true that without them, our sentences like this may not make sense. I also love () too much.