The Misplaced Comma . . .

drives writers nutso, at least it does this writer. Oh, I'm not talking the grammatical comma or the serial comma or any one of the thousand of comma uses available.

I'm talking about the 'troll' comma. The one that appears from nowhere and lands somewhere in your sentence. Troll commas make no sense. They are just THERE.

As I mentioned, I made it through to the second round of Lori Brighton's first paragraph contest being judged by her Kensington editor, Megan Records. YAY!!

Anyhoo, those of us who made the next round were to send the first page, including the submitted paragraph, to Lori. Once I finally FOUND the stupid manuscript, I read/tweaked/edited my first page and copied it to Lori. A couple of days later, I thought, 'Well, if by some freakin' miracle I make the next round then I'd better clean up the rest of chapter one."

And guess what?

Yep, I found a troll comma. In the very last sentence of my submission. Place right after 'would' and before 'poof'. Aaaarrrggghhh! I HATE troll commas. They make absolutely zero sense, but they happen.

Now, do I get totally freaked about this?

No. . . well, maybe . . . naw, not really.

Because what can I do about it? NOTHING. It is out of my hands and in the hands of the editor judge. But I like to think that the troll comma won't make or break my submission. I hope it's my words and how they are used that would be the selling point of my page.

Who knows? I don't. But when I come across a troll comma in contest entries or in CP's work, I highlight them and go about my biz. I'm not going to count it against the writer--unless the submission is riddled with erroneous commas, then there's a problem to deal with--I like to read, envisioning the big picture and how the author tells the story.

How do you deal with 'troll' commas? Do you go ballistic? Roll your eyes? Heave a sigh and think, "Crap, I just sent that to twenty agents."?

Well, I fixed the comma and moved on.

Now, it's time to . . . Write On!