Commas

I kind of agree with them. They should be there in My opinion.

All those commas look fine to me. In the second excerpt, the comma is in place to separate the two main clauses that constitute the compound sentence. The same with the third excerpt.

In the final excerpt, I think the commas just serve a dramatic effect, as I think that sentence would read fine without them, although I would actually be tempted to add a comma in between "dreams" and "and", as although it isn't technically necessary, it improves fluency, or at least in my view.

Let's see what Scrabtrapman says.

they all look fine to me, as OJA said, they serve as dramatic effect

Same here

In my experience, Australians (i.e. Nate) tend to try and get rid of as many commas as they can. This weirds me out. These long strings of words with no commas to indicate the natural pauses often trip me up, and I have to go back and re-read the sentence in a way that sounds natural.

Your last example is a case of moving adjectival phrases about for dramatic effect. Although removing the commas produces a clause that remains syntactical, I think it would be much more natural to arrange it like this.

And its the adjectival phrases of this word order that have been shuffled to the end.

I agree with OddjobAbe, I definately want to put a comma before the "and". Without it, it feels like you're going to go on to say something like, "He'd been here [...] in his dreams and nightmares/fantasies/fanfiction."

* I presume "here" is a location or setting that the character visits in his dreams, as opposed to "in his dreams" itself being the setting. If I'm wrong, I'd lift that adjectival phrase out to clarify the meaning of "here", as in "He'd been here, in his dreams, hundreds of times before.".

i had my doubts, but after reading the comments here i agree that they sound better with the commas. although on the last excerpt:

personally i'd be tempted to rearrange the sentence structure to:

dunno if that flows as well, though.

I was going to make the same correction as MA. I've always struggled with commas because I'm that person who tends to type how they talk, and I rarely ever pause and just end up rambling with no pauses for quite some time. I read things that way, too, because it's what I'm most used to. SOMETIMES THOUGH... SOMETIMES I ENGLISH WELL ENOUGH TO FIGURE THESE THINGS OUT.

This is one of those times because I know if I had written any of those sentences and turned them into a class I'd get marked off for a severe lack of commas where there "should be".

All right, the expert on commas has arrived.

They are fine, there are of course rules as to where you should use commas but if you are trying to denote a (dramatic) pause anywhere then you can use them if you want. They're not wrong - dare I say it again because I know I'll get a lot of flak but - there's no such thing a 'wrong' English, only non-standard. Our laws on English Language are not what they were in the descriptivist era in the 1700s, English has broadened far to wide for anyone to be right or wrong, it's the same thing that happened to Latin. Chinglish for instance, is not 'wrong' or 'bad' English, it's just the natural evolution of the English language when a lack of native speakers are there to enforce the Oxford standard. There's a potential that by the end of the century and English person speaking English won't be able to understand a Chinese person speaking English because they will have become two separate languages.

So, a really overly elaborate post for something quite simple but it also comes as a chance to explain what I meant last time I talked about commas. xD

I, agree.

I, BM.

Cun't do, gramar.

Really it feels like your teacher is trying to emphasize punctuation to you. Those sentences would be fine with or without commas, but the commas are placed to add pause or break up clauses, which (if being completely grammatically correct) is totally fine.

The thing to remember is that you don’t have to rigidly follow the rules of grammar when writing creatively. It helps to keep them in mind, but the occasional dip into a less formal style is totally okay, at least in my books.

Yes, think of it like Bach vs. Debussy.

Thanks for the input guys.

I can see why some of them should be commas now. I still don't like most of them, but I'll just restructure those sentences, and probably the ones around them.

To be fair, most of the text of mine that you've read has been pretty casual.

Speaking as the member of the forums who probably possibly has the most experience having his writing edited (and also editing other people's writing), I'm very conscious of commas and sentence structure. I tend to slave over them in second drafts.

Having said all that, I generally agree with Phylum's teacher. Commas aren't just about pausing for breath, they're for seperating clauses.

First example: This one is questionable, actually. But mainly because the 'however' sticks out like a sore thumb regardless of where the commas are. Rewrite the sentence from scratch.

Second and third examples: You're seperating the first part of the sentence which specifies when the action occurred, from the second part in which the action is described.

Fourth example: The phrase 'hundreds of times' is similar to a parenthetical statement. It could be taken out and the sentence would still flow properly. It's standard practice to place these explanatory clauses in between commas. Having said that, I think you're trying to use the 'hundreds of times' as a form of emphasis rather than an explanation, in which case you could rephrase it as "He had been here before on hundreds of occassions in his dreams, and he could hardly believe his eyes. "

Semicolons make you clever

I considered a semi-colon, but I decided that I would be better off redoing the sentence and not coming across as a pretensions asshat to whoever might end up moderating my work.

Semi-colons really are tools of the smug and the pretentious. Good job.