Ah, A I

With­out ask­ing my per­mis­sion Gram­marly — the spelling and gram­mar check­er — has proof­read my writ­ing since 2016. At least that’s their claim. They inform me that I’ve used 23,896,330 words dur­ing this time. Not sure I believe that. They fur­ther instruct­ed me that my pri­ma­ry writ­ing prob­lem is com­mas. That, I believe. In par­tic­u­lar, they say I am inept at putting in com­mas after intro­duc­to­ry claus­es. Also — they say — I’m messy with using com­mas in com­pound sen­tences. But they are hap­py to teach me prop­er usage.

Did you know (accord­ing to Gram­marly) that com­mas are used in the fol­low­ing ways?

• Sep­a­rat­ing items in a list of three or more
• Con­nect­ing two inde­pen­dent claus­es with a coor­di­nat­ing conjunction
• Set­ting apart non-restric­tive rel­a­tive clauses
• Set­ting apart nonessen­tial appositives
• Set­ting apart intro­duc­to­ry phrases
• Set­ting apart inter­rupters and par­en­thet­i­cal elements
• Set­ting apart ques­tion tags
• Set­ting apart names in direct address
• Sep­a­rat­ing parts of a date
• Sep­a­rat­ing parts of a loca­tion, like a city and its country
• Sep­a­rat­ing mul­ti­ple coor­di­nat­ing adjectives
• Sep­a­rat­ing quo­ta­tions and attribu­tive tags

In truth, I could have not writ­ten those rules. I’ll try to do bet­ter. But I’d feel a lot bet­ter if, when using A I, they would insert a V between those letters.