My maiden name is an Americanized version of Gingrich, but I have no idea who changed it or when.

Isn't that cool? I found a remarkable number of relatives that way, including ancestors who were just visiting.

So awesome. It also gives us yet another DOB for my grandmother. This one is 1909. We also have 2 well-after-the-fact birth certificates (um, certificates acquired when her parents got married shortly before they immigrated) indicating 1908 and 1910. No idea what the story is.

I don't know of any relatives that went through Ellis Island although there must be some.

Both my father's and mother's last names were mangled but for different reasons. My paternal grandfather's parents divorced when he was very young and his mother remarried. She never, ever spoke of her first husband, and when my grandfather final went to school and was asked to spell his last name he guessed. The lived in rural Kentucky and there weren't that many written records.

My maternal grandfather's name was mangled at some point either when his father was sent to an Indian school or at some point shortly thereafter. We only found out it was changed after my aunt found some letters with the original spelling.

I just read this on another list, and I wanted to share this with people who would be properly appalled.

As a writing teacher as well as PR writer, I recommend using commas only where they help clarify something. If your meaning is clear without one, don't use it.

If it's grammatically incorrect, however, that will immediately lower my opinion of you and the thing you're promoting.

What's appall-worthy in that, Ginger?

(Yes, I kind of suck at grammar. Don't tell.)

Huh. Someone's being carried out in a stretcher. No one i know, but half the floor is staring and pointing.

I recommend using commas only where they help clarify something.

Well, as a general rule, that can help -- there's a huge segment of the "writing" public (I use quotes judiciously) who hemorrhage commas. I think it's a gene, because in Britain that same tendency is expressed in unnecessary and wrong apostrophes.

But, yeah. Gross simplification. I also put in a comma where I would stop for a breath, were I speaking aloud.

If your meaning is clear without one, don't use it.

The use of a comma in this sentence being ironic, in that case?

Someone's being carried out in a stretcher

Before I read the rest of the post, I thought ita was referring to the upcoming comma kerfufle.

You don't place commas according to clarity. You place commas according to grammatical rules. Frequently the result is the same, but my experience has been that if you just let people place commas on the basis of "more clear" or "sounds better," you have commas strewn willy-nilly about a document.

t Obsessive, much?