Commas

I would like to write my bibliographic essay on comma usage. I have never fully understood commas or the rules behind them and for that reason I want to do some research on them. I can usually tell where commas should and should not be, but I never know why or how to explain it. From here say I've learned that comma usage can be a very controversial subject, among nerds. I feel obligated to learn as much as I can about the rules of commas because there are students who come into the writing center that may possibly view me as the kind of nerd that would know about all the rules of commas.

After doing a small search for information on comma usage, I'm thinking about changing my topic. If I can find an article on commas to jump from and use it's bibliography to find more and more on the subject than I will probably stick with it. Otherwise, I will change my subject. I realize too, that I probably need to get a lot more specific than just comma usage. If I focus on
how to teach comma usage or go even broader and into how to teach punctuation, then I could find a lot of information.

I'm glad this was the prompt, because just writing about it has helped me think. I like the teaching punctuation subject, because I found about fifty gazillion articles on it in JSTOR. That is going to be my subject. Done and done.