Who Invented The Dreaded Comma?

And should I hate them for it?

It seems as though every time I run my writing through an editing program, it lights up like a battle station on red alert. The issue? Commas. It is always commas. I get periods. I get colons. I get apostrophes. I get run on sentences. I spell pretty well. I understand how to write an effective paragraph and how small or large paragraphs can add to the flow of a story. Recently, I have grasped the concept of the long dash. I don’t know what it is called, but I use them — see? What I don’t seem to get is commas.

I know there are hard and fast comma rules, like adding a comma after an opening preposition or when you are splitting up lists of unrelated things. I don’t seem to grasp when a comma is supposed to “add a breath.” Maybe I read differently than other people but where I put my commas is not where the leading grammar software ever wants me to put my commas. It tells me to delete half of them and then add them back elsewhere.

And I dutifully listen.

But who invented the comma? Why do they appear so prominently in modern writing but appear nowhere in ancient texts?

From dots to slashes to commas

Punctuation is an essentially modern invention. Ancient writing did not feature what we would…