Commas at the beginning of a sentence: should I follow convention or intuition?
An example from my own writing (Mother and daughter are burying their deceased dog):
As planned that Friday, Mom and I underwent Choco’s burial at my home in __ (yes, she kept him in a garbage bag for three days). We dug a hole in the backyard, threw the corpse inside, and shoveled the soil back. Finally, my mom knelt down and stuck a handmade wooden cross in the little mountain of dirt. After that we stood there, in solemn silence, looking at the grave being bathed by the evening sunlight. I felt strange. Like I’d come visiting a hometown I’d forgotten about a long time ago.
I could have written the bolded parts like this:
As planned that Friday Mom and I underwent Choco’s burial ...
Finally my mom knelt down and stuck the wooden cross ...
After that, we stood there, in solemn silence ...
How should I decide whether to put a comma in these cases? Should I follow my hear? Or what English teachers and spelling software tells me?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/14565. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
I think all your original examples sound fine. Go with your inner ear and let your beta/editor add or remove commas for the sake of grammar. As Bobn points out, the commas indicate pauses, and all those pauses sound natural and appropriate.
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