Hi, I'm Nate and I'm a grammar geek.

I know that I'm a grinch about grammar even if you can't tell from my scribblings here. I intentionally write casually and colloquially simply because that's also how I talk most of the time. But I consider myself to be a decent wordsmith and something of a grammar grinch when I'm writing for business or looking at other people's work.

Imagine then my surprise when I received my text book yesterday, just in time for my first night of Writing Purposes and Research class. The book's title is The Little, Brown Handbook. I took one look at the title to this book and said, "What the heck's that comma doing in that title?" My puny brain says that the comma does not belong there.

I even asked the instructor last night, she thought that comma might be redundant too. So, having 968 pages of the finest writing specific instructions between the covers of this new book, I went digging to find out about that dangling character. And there it is, on page 480, instructions for using a comma to separate coordinate adjectives. The secret here is that coordinate adjectives modify the same word equally. If one adjective is more closely related to the noun then the adjectives must not be separated by a comma.

There are actually 4 rules for determining if adjectives are coordinate or not. The most important rule is can the word and be inserted between the adjectives without changing the meaning? If the answer is yes, the comma goes between coordinate adjectives. If the answer is no, then no comma is used.

Did the rest of you folks know this already? Am I the last to learn this essential rule of comma usage? Does anybody else find this as interesting as I do?

You folks could be in big trouble because I like this book!