Comman sense,,,,,, or lack thereof

Let’s be frank: some folks are good at the written word.  Some aren’t. That’s fine!  It’s the way of the world, and neither marks how good or bad a person we are. Hell, you might find an imperfection or three on this blog entry.

That said, I’ve noticed something that bothers the pants off me lately, and for me there is no excuse for this, no matter your facility with the written word.

Ever notice how, when a select few post a comment on the internet, they will often throw in a number of consecutive commas? No, really! This was not something I learned about in school, but it’s actually a thing:

Ugh. I call it the Multicomma.

Now, far be it for me to be the grammar police, but I never learned of such a phenomenon in my formative years. We did learn about points of ellipsis, a frequently used writing device which is a series of three dots (known to many as simply, dot-dot-dot).

I get mildly annoyed when I see more than three question marks or exclamation points in a comment. I get crankier when I see more than three periods used to denote points of ellipsis. Don’t get me started on all caps or improper apostrophe use, either!

All of the above aside, if there’s one thing that just completely grinds my gears, it’s the mysterious and completely unavoidable Multicomma. Why do you do that? Is it because you meant to hit “period” but missed? Is there some secret punctuation trend I’m not aware of? Is it intended to be a more emphatic series of ellipses than those denoted with conventional periods?

I don’t know. You can commit all the grammatical sins you want, commenters of the Internet, but please, for the love of all that is sacred, unless you are writing back-door code in an IT capacity, COMMAS ALWAYS STAND ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m going to go write cranky letters to the editor and yell at clouds now.  Thanks for reading.