Commas, man. These things are tricky.

Commas, in the world of punctuation, are the building blocks. They can make or break your sentence. A single comma in the wrong place can completely change the meaning of a sentence. For example, I'm sure a bunch of people have seen:

Let's eat, Grandpa!

Which would be someone telling their grandpa to join them for the meal. Then:

Let's eat Grandpa!

Which would mean... let's munch on our grandfather's bones and chew his flesh and begin the rise of cannibalism.

Here's another less well-known example:

Well done steak. - someone asking for their steak to be cooked well.

Well done, steak. - someone congratulating a piece of steak for, I dunno, winning a race or solving global warming or winning an acrobatics tournament.

Well, done steak. - someone admitting they have made love to a piece of steak.

See? Commas matter!

Now, a slightly horrifying fact about me is that... I've never had problems with commas.

I was reflecting on this today. We never really were taught grammar a lot in school, which I'm sure many students can also resonate with. For some reason, schools just don't really always break down specific laws of punctuation.

However, for some reason, all of my youngest childhood memories are of me learning grammar. For some strange reason, I was bored whenever we would learn about typing skills and creating graphs, but when my teachers would dedicate those special fifty minutes in a year to teaching us something about punctuation? I was switched on. I was focused.

I'm that weirdo who gets turned on by good grammar. Go figure.

Anyways! So, my classmates in university have often asked me to proofread their emails -- specifically to ensure that commas are in the correct places. One of them asked me today, "How do I know if I need a comma?"

Very stupidly, my answer was, "Oh. Well. Um. Just. If there is a pause in the sentence if you said it aloud, it probably requires a comma."

Which sounds like good advice, except... it's not. Because it doesn't take into account how long the pauses are. For example, if every pause required a comma, our stories would look like:

I will be going to prison soon, I'm out on bail, I didn't do anything bad, just check fraud, but it was for a lot, anyways, when I went back to my home country, I almost got killed by a penguin, I'm skinny with soft, boyish looks, and I can't fight, my lawyer pretty much told me that I would probably get stabbed some day, but yeah, I'm going to prison soon,

Can you see the problem? If every pause had a comma, we wouldn't be making sentences anymore.

So, when do we use commas? Let me try to break it down for you!

I'm trying to think of a theme for this chapter. How about we go with the murderous penguins?

What does this mean?

An independent clause is a clause that would work as a sentence by itself. Here are two independent clauses:

I went diving. I saw a penguin with a knife.

Now, what is a coordinating conjunction? They are usually words like 'but', 'and', 'or', 'so' and a few others. So, if I were to join these sentences with a coordinating conjunction, it would look like:

I went diving and I saw a penguin with a knife.

However! This is not complete. Because, well, read the rule! We need a comma! Like so:

I went divingand I saw a penguin with a knife.

Be careful of comma splices! If you have two independent clauses, but you have the connecting conjunction while still keeping the comma, you have something like this:

I went divingI saw a penguin with a knife.

The above sentence is a comma splice! Illegal! Banned! We don't want them here! Die!

I've mentioned independent clauses, but... huh? What the heck is a dependent clause now?

While an independent clause is a strong individual who don't need no man, a dependent clause is a simp. It needs a partner to survive. Basically, a dependent clause is one that requires an independent clause to survive in the wild. For example:

When I went swimming I saw a penguin with a knife.

"I saw a penguin with a knife" is an independent clause. It works as a sentence on its own.

"When I went swimming" is not a complete sentence. This makes it a dependent clause.

And, while the two are joined together, you need a comma there to separate them!

Oh my goodness. More big words.

An appositive is something that gives more information about something. For example:

When I went swimming, I saw High Heel

The 'a type of murderous penguin' is an appositive; it gives more information about High Heel. And, as you can see, it is separated from the rest of a sentence with a comma.

This is the most commonly known usage!

I saw a murderous penguina religious cult and a communist while swimming.

The murderous penguin, religious cult, and communist are all separated by commas!

If you have a sentence starting with words like... okay, there are too many. But if you start sentences like:

OccasionallyI see murderous penguins crossing the road.

ReluctantlyI let the murderous penguins stab me.

However it kind of felt good.

See how there's a comma after each one? Yeah. Do that! More examples include:

FirstlyI would like you to notice that I do this specific comma a lot. When, you might ask? Well:

For example I just did it again.

If you want information on this one, I suggest the chapter in this book called 'Dialogue'. However, for the sake of this chapter, here are some examples of how to use commas:

"Please don't kill me" I told the duck.

The duck said"But your ribcage would make such a sexy corset."

"But if you do this" I said "I will be sad."

Like so:

I found a murderous penguin while swimming towards 42 Wallaby Way SydneyAustralia.

And no, I don't mean your date, as in... the person you're dating. I mean, aren't we on Wattpad to make up for our lack of a love life? No? Just me? Okay... Never mind.

On Fridaythe sixth of August I was killed by a penguin.

No, you can't possibly mean that I need a comma in this sentence...

Yes, that is exactly what I mean...

No, you did not just use this imaginary banter as an example.

Yes, I sure did.

Similar to the grandpa examples from earlier!

"Please don't kill meMurderous Penguin!"

"You can't stop me! Your intestines are mine, Harry Styles!"

Why do I always insist on killing Harry Styles in all of my examples? Why? I hope he never reads this book.

For example!

I saw a really big nasty penguin named Jonas Brothers.

Big and nasty are separated by the comma! Please be careful of this. I sometimes see things like:

I saw a pastelyellow penguin named Jonas Brothers.

Because the pastel is describing the shade of yellow, you would use that comma there. That is an incorrect example. It should simply be:

I saw an pastelyellow penguin named Jonas Brothers.

Sounds confusing! But watch this:

I saw a murderous penguinwhile swimming.

That part in bold is a negation, and it needs to be separated out by two commas in that scenario! This could also be moved around so that it's at the end, like so:

I saw a murderous penguin while swimming,

There are standard rules for this. Generally, you separate numbers in groups of threes. So, for example, these are fine:

387.

495.

420. Blaze It.

However, these are okay:

9349402.

71736916.

1293.

They should be:

9349402.

71736916.

1293.

Notice how there are no spaces after these commas? That's important! For numbers, you don't require the space after the comma!

For example:

Harry Styles, PM, was elected to run the war against birds.

What, you thought PM stood for Prime Minister?

Nah, it stood for Penguin Murderer.

Sometimes, despite me saying to use a comma in some circumstances, it may be apt to just... not use that comma, based on a stylistic choice. It should be rare though, and used scarcely, but for example, if you are showing that someone rambles and talks without breathing:

Hi my name is Sunshine and it is so nice to meet you and I'm going to avoid using commas here to show that I'm frantically rushing to speak to you and do you get the point yet or do I seriously have to keep talking more?

That should just about cover all of it!

I just want to quickly say: 30000 reads? (Notice that I used the comma correctly?) You guys spoil me. I started this out as a small way to just rant about things that irritated me on Wattpad, and instead, I've been really, really lucky to have such beautiful souls read this.

Seriously. Some of you crack me up with your comments and quips, and I've noticed a few of you shout-out this story or recommend it to your friends. Every single time, my heart melts. Thank you so, so much.

Once again, I'd love to hear from you! Have you had writer's block? What's it like for you? And, most importantly, how do you overcome it?