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?

I thought ita was referring to the upcoming comma kerfufle

This strikes me more as a silent abduction sort of a thing.

But if you don't know the rules, surely clarity is a better guideline than, say, making a pattern on the page.

My great-grandfather and his brothers came to the US on different ships, a few years apart from each other, and each one ended up with a last name spelled slightly differently. (First letter was a yud in Yiddish and sometimes became a Y in English, but sometimes a J, and a vowel that was an ayin in Yiddish sometimes went to E and sometimes I.)

One of the other branches of my family came into NYC in 1890 or 1891, which was when immigrants were being brought through a sort of temporary office while everything on Ellis Island was being built. The records from there are nearly impossible to track down. Before 1889 and after 1892 are much easier.

Whether I have used too many or too few commas I am certain to find an expert who agrees with me. I rarely stress over it.

Today is my baby brother's 50th birthday. We get to be the same age for 18 days. I'm feeling guilty that I am too exhausted from a tough week to drive over 2 hours to celebrate with him. He'll likely forgive me.

(Cashmere, you have snail media type mail headed your way)

Most Scandinavian immigrants didn't have family names, so the names often were chosen on the spot at Ellis Island (the upper classes had family names, but tended not to emigrate). On my mother's side of the family, my grandfather and his brother ended up with different family names. On my father's side, my family name is taken either from the name of the farm where my great-grandfather was born, or from a character of Ibsen's who is Norway's version of Paul Revere. There seems to be no way to figure out which it was. As a Buffista, I naturally prefer the Ibsen version of the story.

But if you don't know the rules, surely clarity is a better guideline than, say, making a pattern on the page.

Certainly, but if you're teaching writing, you should teach the rules. Otherwise it's like a chemistry lab teacher saying, "Just put in the amount that seems right to you." The only difference to me is the probability of explosions.

Certainly, but if you're teaching writing, you should teach the rules.

Absolutely. I am suitably appalled, now that I understand.