Grammar Am I going comma crazy or what?

I've been giving ProWritingAid a try. It's an amazing tool but it seems to want me to go comma crazy. Before almost every "and" a lot of other places. So I ask my fellow writers. Is this too many commas? do I need to change my style?
Note, Speck is a vegetarian werewolf, a rarity. Starburner and Alexand are mental companions.

Spoiler: To comma or not to comma

Speck took a deep breath and let it all out in a whoosh. He ran his hand through his speckled hair. “Why did I become Captain?”
“Because Forcein needs a true warrior who isn’t bloodthirsty,” Starburner spoke up.
“Same manure he fed me.” Speck sprang to his feet. He crossed the room, peered out the balcony curtain, and spun to face them. “I bet a certain sword of wizards had a hand in it.”
“I am not the sword of wizards!” Starburner snapped. “Hell, I was just a magician in life!”
“Well, excuse me!” Speck shot back, his hands balling into fists. “I’m just a dumb wolf who somehow wound up as Captain thanks to your influence.”
Aden rubbed the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t worth arguing over.”
“My influ–”
“Do I need to exchange you for the pitchfork in the barn again, Starburner?” Aden added, giving her a mental glare.
“You wouldn’t da—” Starburner leaned back as Aden crossed his arms and lifted his chin.
Alexand stepped up behind her and touched her shoulder inside Aden’s mindscape.
Starburner ducked her head. “You’re right, Speck I’m sorry.”
Speck panted for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry too.”
“For the record, I told Forcein to make you captain, not her,” Aden stood, smoothing his tunic. “So, if you have any complaints about it, take it up with me.”
Speck pressed his lips together, jamming his hands into his pockets as he stared at the bed.
“Speckles.”
The wolf flinched and thumbed his ear. “Um—I just—don’t think I’m a good leader, Aden.”
Aden crossed the room to put his hand on Speck’s shoulder. “The greatest leaders don’t think they can lead, but do the best they can.”
“I guess.” Speck sighed, studying his shoes. “But what about my issues with meat eaters? I see them and I remember my mom’s death. What if I—”
“You won’t.” Aden said so firmly that Speck jerked his head up to stare at him. “Because you are going to bring honor to your mother by getting vegetarian werewolves, the equal status they deserve.”
Speck stared at Aden. Slowly, he opened his mouth into an O, then nodded. “You’re right. I need to change them, not kill them.”

In my eyes, the commas are needed, I just didn't know where they were supposed to be. A test reader says I've gone comma crazy. What do you guys think?

Edit, I removed one comma for clarity, between become and Captain.

 

I don't think you've gone crazy with commas at all. I'm sort of a grammar wiz and these commas all look right to me.

 

Every comma looks good to me.

 

Thank you both, but Seven crowns found one that we missed. "...getting vegetarian werewolves, <- the equal status they deserve.”

Thank you. I appreciate the time you took to go over my work. I agree, the ", and" is not my thing. I most likely will go back and remove them all and disable to rule.

 

This one is wrong. I was confused about what the sentence even meant, until later when it became clear Speck is the Captain. I assumed he was talking to the Captain and a few words had been left out ("Why did I become such a loser, Captain?")

Other than that the rest seem fine to me. I've read most of the excerpt but not quite all of it. Enough to determine that no, you don't seem comma crazy.

I'm not a grammar wiz, but I do own the Gregg Reference Manual and I used to study it a lot, and I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express a few times.

 

Oh wow—I missed all but the first response somehow. And they came in yesterday! I thought I was the second person responding. Looks like the point I brought up was already addressed.

 

Your comma use is the way I write. Assuming I'm right, you're right! it all looks fine, including the comma preceding "and."

 

As I understand it commas are used to set off phrases or clauses. Some people have been taught you put a comma wherever you would pause in speaking, which is partly right, because we do pause between the main sentence and clauses or phrases, but sometimes we pause for dramatic effect, and a comma shouldn't go there.

There may be another reason or two for commas that I'm forgetting. If so I'd like to hear what.

 

I missed this one, but, yes, you are right.

 

I would think twice about omitting all the Oxford commas. I used to be totally against the Oxford comma, and in journalism you usually won't find it. However, in creative writing and novels and the such you will more often than not see the Oxford comma. I had to sort of retrain myself to use it after many years of thinking it wasn't necessary. I still don't love it, but it's there, and if everyone else is using it, I kind of think I should, too. An editor is likely to add them all in if you sell your story to a publisher. I don't see the point in making their job harder. I guess I've conformed.

 

I sometimes use it, sometimes not. My main criteria is clarity. If it improves sentence clarity I'll use it, if it confuses things I won't.

 

It's easy to add in if necessary and once I am done with ProWritingAid, I'll be going over the book once again and see if I can't avoid the comma abuse. I disabled one rule, but this rule pops up often enough too
"Missing comma before coordinating conjunction when dependant clause follows an independent clause."
and it pertains to this sentence
Sammy [the unicorn] swung his head toward them. “No sense sleeping with you two big mouths.” He let out an enormous yawn, displaying every tooth and smacked his lips together.

So, it's not just the oxford comma. Personally, I think and never needs a comma before it, but that's just me.

 

I think you missed one:

Shouldn't that be: "You're right, Speck, [comma] I'm sorry"?

 

Funny, I use prowritingaid, for the scrivener integration, and the fact I suck at grammar. Shush Louanne. I find more often than not it tells me to remove commas. I would double check your settings, as I recall there was a setting for the type of writing.

 

I set it to Fantasy, which is my genre. General fiction doesn't seem to change that much from fantasy.

 

On a side note this is the conjunction and box. I had them reset my rules so I can show it to you.



hmm it doesnt want to show https://i.postimg.cc/7LmkZcSM/comma1.png here it is

 

Somewhere back around my eighth grade year (or so), shortly after the signing of the Magna Carta, my English teacher told us that comma usage is greatly different in the U.S. and in the U.K. I think he had a more alliterative way of phrasing it, but basically he said the rule for commas is, "In the U.S. the rule is 'When in doubt, leave it out.' In the U.K. the rule is 'When in doubt, leave it in.' "

I regularly correspond with a friend in Greece who was educated in the U.K., and his writing often seems to me as though he found a sale on wholesale commas and feels a need to use them before they reach their date of expiry.

 

My own observations largely bear this out.

 

LMAO that's a good one

 

Every time I read a discussion like this, I'm reminded of what James Thurber wrote about his experiences with Harold Ross, the founder of the New Yorker magazine, in The Years With Ross:

"The New Yorker's overuse of commas, originating in Ross's clarification complex, has become notorious the world over among literary people. In Paris, in 1955, an English journalist said to me one night, 'The biography of Ross should be called The Century of the Comma Man.' A professor of English somewhere in England wrote me ten years ago a long, itemized complaint about the New Yorker comma, objecting to, among other things, its use after 'moreover and 'furthermore,' in which, he said the comma is implicit. He picked out this sentence in a New Yorker casual of mine: 'After dinner, the men went into the living room," and he wanted to know why I, or the editors, had put in the comma. I could explain that one all right. I wrote back that this particular comma was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up."

 

Big fan on ProWritingAid. My other go to platform is Hemingway Editor.
As for the "comma" issue, looks good to me.

 

Not crazy at all but (mostly) correct. I see only four errors plus the one you corrected. The removed comma before Captain in your first paragraph was a vocative comma that implied Speck was addressing someone with the title, rank, or nickname of Captain. You were right to remove it. Your other commas are needed for correct punctuation.

-------------------------------

Speck took a deep breath and let it all out in a whoosh. He ran his hand through his speckled hair. “Why did I become[you correctly removed a comma here] Captain?”
“Because Forcein needs a true warrior who isn’t bloodthirsty,” Starburner spoke up. [1]
“Same manure he fed me.” Speck sprang to his feet. He crossed the room, peered out the balcony curtain, and spun to face them. “I bet a certain sword of wizards had a hand in it.”
“I am not the sword of wizards!” Starburner snapped. “Hell, I was just a magician in life!”
“Well, excuse me!” Speck shot back, his hands balling into fists. “I’m just a dumb wolf [2] who somehow wound up as Captain thanks to your influence.”
Aden rubbed the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t worth arguing over.”
“My influ–”
“Do I need to exchange you for the pitchfork in the barn again, Starburner?” Aden added, giving her a mental glare.
“You wouldn’t da—” Starburner leaned back as Aden crossed his arms and lifted his chin.
Alexand stepped up behind her and touched her shoulder inside Aden’s mindscape.
Starburner ducked her head. “You’re right, Speck I’m sorry.”
Speck panted for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry too.”
“For the record, I told Forcein to make you captain [3], not her,[period, not comma]” Aden stood, smoothing his tunic. “So,[no comma][4] if you have any complaints about it, take it up with me.”
Speck pressed his lips together, jamming his hands into his pockets as he stared at the bed.
“Speckles.”
The wolf flinched and thumbed his ear. “Um—I just—don’t think I’m a good leader, Aden.”
Aden crossed the room to put his hand on Speck’s shoulder. “The greatest leaders don’t think they can lead, but do the best they can.”
“I guess.” Speck sighed, studying his shoes. “But what about my issues with meat eaters? I see them and I remember my mom’s death. What if I—”
“You won’t.” Aden said[comma][5] so firmly that Speck jerked his head up to stare at him. “Because you are going to bring honor to your mother by getting vegetarian werewolves,[no comma][6] the equal status they deserve.”
Speck stared at Aden. Slowly, he opened his mouth into an O, then nodded. “You’re right. I need to change them, not kill them.”

-------------------------------

[1] "Spoke up" isn't ideal as a speech verb here. It would look funny after a period, but it also looks a bit funny after a comma. "Chimed in" is more frequently used as a speech verb. "Spoke up" (followed by a period or sometimes a colon, never a comma) works much better in a sentence before the words someone says. That's where one usually sees it.

[2] You correctly omitted the comma after "wolf," where many people would erroneously place it. In this case, "who somehow wound up as Captain" clarifies which [kind of] dumb wolf Speck is talking about, instead of adding information about a specific dumb wolf already identified.

[3] An argument can be made for capitalizing or not capitalizing "captain" as a description, but you should be consistent. Here it's uncapitalized, but in the first paragraph it's capitalized.

[4] Very unfortunately, Word's brain-dead grammar checker places a comma after every initial "So"—as if it were "Well." The clickbait site englishgrammar.org promotes this mistake as well. However, more august/reliable authorities like the Hodges Harbrace Handbook advise to "Avoid using comma after a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so)." [Nowadays called FANBOYS.] Doing so is a strong discriminator of skillful writing. And beyond Hodges Harbrace, one need only survey most novels published by high-end publishers throughout the 1900s—overwhelmingly, they follow the Hodges Harbrace rule, particularly in the case of "So." Surveying over a million words of writing in a dozen respected novels whose names we would all recognize, I found only 8 counterexamples, compared to almost 1,000 examples supporting the rule. So-comma mostly inhabits the realm of under-edited business writing. At nearly $100, Hodges Harbrace is expensive, because it's the #1 arbiter in Freshman Comp classes across the nation—some graders simply cite its rule numbers without further comment when marking papers. It resolves many points clearly and authoritatively.

[5] This is probably more a matter of good style than of formal punctuation. When using a verb like "said" as a speech tag, most published authors use some kind of punctuation before anything more than a trivial elaboration. Thus it's okay to have "One would think so," she said with a grimace, but not "One would think so," she said and flounced across the room to open a window. That's because flouncing across the room and opening a window do not specifically attribute speech. They're not part of the speech tag per se, but convey further action or other description. In your sentence, I'd probably use a dash after "Aden said."

[6] Another strong rule is not to place a comma between a verb and its object. The comma after "werewolves" breaks that sentence. You probably included it because when you speak the words, you have a down-inflection after werewolves. But as Anne Stilman observes in her excellent 2010 [revised] Grammatically Correct: The Essential Guide to Spelling, Style, Usage, Grammar and Punctuation, speech often contains meaningful pauses or down-inflections that we do not indicate with commas in writing them. Listening to rhythm and inflection is not a reliable way to decide about commas. In fact, it's probably the greatest single source of confusion about using them. The Stilman book is highly affordable and a good straight-through read, making it indeed an essential item for the writer's bookshelf.