Punctuation may look small, but it has a huge ego and a bigger impact. A single comma can decide whether you invite your grandmother to dinner or accidentally turn her into the main course. Consider the difference between “Let’s eat, Grandma” and “Let’s eat Grandma.” One tiny curl of ink stands between a family meal and a forensic investigation.
Commas also moonlight as traffic lights for your sentences. They tell readers when to pause, breathe, and not run three ideas into a grammar pileup. Skip them, and your writing starts to sound like a panicked voicemail. Sprinkle them everywhere, and your sentence feels like it’s being read by someone climbing a very steep hill.
So the next time you’re typing quickly and feel tempted to ignore punctuation, think of Grandma. She doesn’t just deserve your love; she deserves that protective comma. Grammar might seem fussy, but sometimes it’s literally the difference between a nice family dinner and… well, Grandma needing a lawyer.
