# Upper limit for number of commas in a single sentence **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 13, 2013, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591 "2013-04-13T12:14:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/1 "2013-04-13T12:14:27Z")
Several months ago, a co-worker, out of the blue, asked me a serious question, “How many commas are allowed in an English sentence?” He thought there was some hard limit of 3 or 4 commas. Of course, I then told him there was no limit and you could use as many commas as you wanted, but at some point it would probably be bad form and you should try to break it up into new sentences. So accepting that there is no hard limit, what do you think is a practical upper limit for the amount of commas in an English sentence before you get exhausted and just can’t take any more? ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/2 "2013-04-13T12:18:28Z")
I dunno, it seems like my English translation of Proust has sentences that go on for a page and a half and must have at least a dozen commas. I think a clever person doesn’t ever _need_ to stop. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/3 "2013-04-13T12:21:30Z")
Not one, or two, or three, or four, or five, or six, or seven, or eight, or nine, or ten, or eleven, or twelve, or thirteen… ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/4 "2013-04-13T12:21:56Z")
You could write an entire novel in one grammatically perfect sentence, and there’s no length limit to a novel, so it’s theoretically infinite. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/5 "2013-04-13T12:23:09Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > You could write an entire novel in one grammatically perfect sentence, and there’s no length limit to a novel, so it’s theoretically infinite. Again… as I admitted, there is no hard limit. But practically, no one would accept an entire novel of one sentence! ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/6 "2013-04-13T12:26:58Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > So accepting that there is no hard limit, what do you think is a practical upper limit for the amount of commas in an English sentence before you get exhausted and just can’t take any more? It depends entirely on the context, I’d think. If you’re writing a literary novel, and you’re good, you can go into the dozens. Given folks like Cormac McCarthy and his disdain for punctuation, you can probably pick up some surplus for real cheap, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see folks treat an otherwise-well-written monosentence novel with great delight. If you’re writing a newspaper story, more than two or three commas is too many. In a beginning reader, avoid the suckers. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/7 "2013-04-13T12:30:45Z")
They had more tolerance for endless sentences in 18th century prose, gluing together any number of clauses with commas and semicolons before ever using a period. But back then English grammarians and writers had different concepts of sentence structure and punctuation, based on classical forms of rhetoric. Nowadays we aim at readability instead. I don’t know about the practical upper limit for commas in the present day, but as for quotation marks, John Barth’s 1968 story “Menelaiad,” which is symmetrically built up of embedded quotes so that the second half of the story mirrors the first half, has at its center the definite world record number of embedded quotation marks: An entire line on the page is taken up with embedded quotation marks (alternating double and single), and at the center is nothing but a question mark. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/8 "2013-04-13T12:41:29Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > Again… as I admitted, there is no hard limit. But practically, no one would accept an entire novel of one sentence! “Baby shoes for sale, never used.” ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/9 "2013-04-13T13:30:02Z")
I’ve been trying to read Hemingway’s Farwell to Arms. I came across one sentence with twelve comas and I think four ‘and(s)’ . It’s wearing me out. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/10 "2013-04-13T16:28:46Z")
What we might have here, of course, is a well-meant “rule” imposed by some teacher, suggesting to his students that whenever we have more than four commas in a particular sentence, as we do in this perfectly comprehensible sentence, the reader will tend to get confused following it, which does happen, but mostly it happens when the sentence is constructed poorly, has other grammatical confusions and missteps in it, or contains ideas which jump around rather than proceeding logically from the idea preceding them. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/11 "2013-04-13T16:29:52Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > I’ve been trying to read Hemingway’s Farwell to Arms. I came across one sentence with twelve comas and I think four ‘and(s)’ . It’s wearing me out. Usually, one coma alone will put me right to sleep. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/12 "2013-04-14T23:40:16Z")
If, in fact, one has an aversion to commas, it might be worthwhile, all things considered, to stop and reflect whether, on balance, such an aversion is a good thing, a bad thing, or neutral, and, upon reflection, if the aversion is a bad thing, what can be done to combat it, or, if the aversion is neutral, whether any change is necessary, or even desirable. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/13 "2013-04-15T00:35:10Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > So accepting that there is no hard limit, what do you think is a practical upper limit for the amount of commas in an English sentence before you get exhausted and just can’t take any more? You should ask Lark Voorhies, the actress who played Lisa on _Saved by the Bell._ [I think she knows.](http://books.google.ca/books?id=Ey2FrakY4KgC&pg=PP4&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false) ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/14 "2013-04-15T02:29:51Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > You should ask Lark Voorhies, the actress who played Lisa on _Saved by the Bell._ [I think she knows.](http://books.google.ca/books?id=Ey2FrakY4KgC&pg=PP4&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false) What the hell is that? ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/15 "2013-04-15T09:02:23Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > If, in fact, one has an aversion to commas, it might be worthwhile, all things considered, to stop and reflect whether, on balance, such an aversion is a good thing, a bad thing, or neutral, and, upon reflection, if the aversion is a bad thing, what can be done to combat it, or, if the aversion is neutral, whether any change is necessary, or even desirable. This is a thing of beauty! I think a couple of these commas may be unnecessary but bravo 😃 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/16 "2013-04-15T14:56:21Z")
There is no legal limit. Sometimes I think that’s really a shame. Try reading royal proclamations from the Elizabethan era sometime. I think their lawyers were paid by the comma. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-limit-for-number-of-commas-in-a-single-sentence/655591/17 "2013-04-15T15:58:33Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > But practically, no one would accept an entire novel of one sentence! [Oh, yeah?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Lessons_for_the_Advanced_in_Age)