For those of you who have students in your home who love the Word (and who therefore love words), I need to beat the blurb drum for a moment — just to alert you to a first-rate opportunity. A good friend and colleague has started up an internet tutorial service in creative writing, and I would strongly urge you to get your student to sign up ipso pronto (as we bilingual people sometimes say). His name is Doug Jones, and his service is named after Arab giraffes, or something like that.
There are two people in the world that I regularly seek out to ask for criticism of my writing. I am married to one of them, and Doug Jones is the other. It is perhaps not surprising that they are of one mind on the comma question, which is whether or not I ought to be allowed to put them wherever I want, and the answer from both is negative. That alone, commends, them highly.
A further testimony to Doug’s powers as a writing teacher is that he would have red-penned that earlier “blurb drum” metaphor, had he only read this before I posted it.
No kidding. Chance of a lifetime, and all of that. Check out his program at http://www.zarafatutorials.com. I am also posting this off to the left as one of the places you need to check out.