Hi Comma; Bye, Comma

From the Chronicle:

Punctuational minimalism has emerged as one of the hallmarks of casual online style — social media, texting, commenting, message boards. One inescapable example, which I’ve previously discussed, is the sea change in email greeting from “Hi, Name” to “Hi Name.”

“This is by no means exclusively the province of kids and illiterates,” writes Ben Yagoda, citing a philosophy blog with a run-on vibe. Well, okay. But The New Yorker, the “the veritable St. Peter’s Basilica of the comma,” is holding up the other end and still going HAM on elite punctuation:

For The New Yorker, using this punctuation mark in all generally accepted and even optional spots, including after the penultimate item in a series, goes without saying. The magazine’s secret sauce in generating commas is its extreme strict constructionist view of nonessential (also known as nondefining) elements in a sentence. Consider: “By the time Blockbuster got around to offering its own online subscription service, in 2004, it was too late.”

My stance on commas is the same as my stance on sex: once you start thinking too much about what you’re doing you ruin the whole game completely. [Chronicle]