Lesson #5--D.T.

Tell us what you thought about the class. Did you ever think there was so much involved in proper comma placement? What was the toughest part of the class? Have you already started to see a difference in your comma usage as you write and review?


Dear classmates,

Being amongst you as students of the comma sense class, I was very pleased to be a part of it all. I felt the camaraderie was great. Everyone appeared to be sincere about questions and answers, and the classroom was very intelligent. I was a bit afraid that my posts would not be liked or answered, but Winnie steered me to this point, and she was very sympathetic to mistakes and how to correct them.

I really felt the detail of comma sense lessons was a very fascinating, detailed difficult task to be perfect at. With my notes I went over the material, almost each day, and took caution to find where I was weakest. To be truthful, I would have never thought that comma placement would be as rigid or as intricate. With Rules as our guides, it was a perfect way to examine it all. I liked seeing examples of such Rules in our notes and how tidy and ingenious it was for Winnie to instruct us as such.

The most difficult part of the class for me was memorizing certain Rules that went with the clause or phrase, the conjunctive coordinates or the subordinate conjunctions. I was very surprised to see how I couldn't understand coordinate adjectives and non-coordinate adjectives right away. Some of these
Rules I hadn't been introduced to me in the way Winnie did so. I felt that she simplified our tasks as best she could. The job was not easy, nor were our tasks as students.

I have seen a total difference in how I look upon the entire task of using comma sense. To categorize commas, then to find them broken down into the Rule System with details of why and how to use a comma has, believe it or not, been something I have favored as I used them in my work. I always felt my "breathing with commas" rule was a good one. I am candid in saying that is not the way to go if one wants to locate perfect commas in our work.