Bones of the Skull — this illustration gives an accurate and faithful representation of the head, face and neck, surrounded by an outline of the fleshy parts as they appear in the human frame. The bones of the head, eight in number, constitute the skull, and those of the face, 14 and number, compose a strong, hard bony case, which encloses and affords a suitable protection for the brain and the four organs a special sense, viz.: site, smell, taste and hearing. All of these bones are in movable, except the lower jaw, which moves by means of a hinge-joint, and permits of the opening and closing of the mouth.

One of the things that struck me as I dictated this last segment (for my readers information I am using Dragon Naturally Speaking to dictate this text as well as my views on the text) was the large number of commas as used in this paragraph. By my count there were 15 used in this paragraph which had three sentences. Now this book in general uses the coma extensively and reminds me of a style of writing that I was taught in grade school shortly before several rules of language were simplified. For example when I was in grade school I was taught that a conjunction that included the word “and” should have a coma in between each item building up to the conjunction including the last word that preceded the word “and.”

Back then I would’ve drafted this sentence as follows:
I went to the store, the post office, the car wash, and the bank.

Later in high school some economy of writing came about and decreased 1 of the commas needed in writing. I don’t know when or why this occurred, but I do recall several grammar teachers remarking on the fact and teach in is the new writing style. Back then I didn’t follow the news quite to the extent that I do today and so I do not recall whether there was a boost in the global economy due to the increased productivity allowed workers especially “knowledge workers” who would not have had to write, type or dictate quite as many commas. In fact they would have one less coma to write. Can you imagine what everyone did with all that extra time saved him from writing?

Now honestly one coma probably to make that big of a difference. But now as I read the library of health I realize that over the last 82 a hundred years the world hasn’t saved just one coma; they have saved close to a dozen per paragraph. Computers may have brought a significant amount of productivity to the workforce, but just imagine how much we’ve saved over the last hundred years writing fewer comas.

I wonder when the majority of the comas as were lost. Maybe it was the result of World War I or World War II or the combination of both wars. It’s possible that to expedite communications Society had to adapt and reduce the number of dits in das used in a telegraph. The war to end all wars may have failed in Indian all wars, but it may have succeeded in putting an end to a few extra comas.