Don't get comma-tose, you could save grandma from being eaten!

A cat has claws at the end of its paws;
A comma is a pause at the end of a clause.
(Found on the Internet)

In my work, I see many examples of commas in the wrong place, or worse, missing commas when they should be there. This picture below shows why the all-important comma can save grandma's life...

The classic punctuation example is this one:

Woman without her man is nothing.

It is said that an English language class was given the above example by the teacher and told to insert the appropriate punctuations.

The girls in the class gave this answer:

Woman: without her, man is nothing.

The boys, not to be outdone, gave this one:

Woman, without her man, is nothing.

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There is a particular comma -- the serial comma aka Oxford comma aka Harvard comma. When a sentence has three or more nouns in a series, this punctuation can help avoid ambiguity.

Lynn alerted me to the example below of one hilarious use of the Oxford comma:

Here's another example, from an obviously pro-Oxford comma blogger:

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Why you should check your child's homework!

Finally, this drawing below has been around for some time. I was reminded about it by a reproduction in the latest issue of Reader's Digest: