Oh my god, commas.

Y’all, I think it’s time we had a chat.  About your commas.  Yeah, those little guys that hang out down there imitating periods but, like, with tails.

I know it’s the last week before the summer series.  I know! I’m excited too.  But the last thing any of us want is to sit around all summer watching all those little commas dangling around like mosquito larvae in everyone’s writing.  EW!  I mean, really, ALLCAPS EW.  Gross.

So here’s the deal with commas:

They separate independent clauses. They separate lists. They separate parenthetical phrases. They go on BOTH SIDES of the year when you’re including a date like “the yeah write summer series starts on July 14, 2014, and is going to be freakin’ awesomesauce.” They even go after sentence-beginning adverbs. There are other wonderful comma rules with which you should be acquainted, but here’s the big one:

Commas. Do not. Go. Everywhere. You. Take. A. Breath.

Period.

So when you’re writing your next post, take a moment and ask yourself: Does a comma really belong here or am I just breathing? (Note: if you think a comma goes after the word “here” in the preceding sentence, you are just breathing.)

Comma Bob! I mean, Comment Bob. And Kevin!

Comment Bob loves you, you love Comment Bob, and we love sending Bob home with folks who take the time to visit, read, and give awesome feedback every week!  This is Bob’s last chance to come out and play before summer, so show him some love, ok?  Let’s wave those pompoms (pom poms? pom-poms?) for each other and for Bob!

Because we have fewer than 30 entries on the grid this week, Kevin the Kiwi will go home with my favorite post.  Mine.  Because you’re not the boss of me, or of Kevin.  Every week we look for a post that goes beyond the submission guidelines and becomes something extra awesome. Kevin and I want to find a post that’s as cool as he is (Kevin has A/C and I don’t and he’s being kind of snotty about it, honestly, so I want to send him home with you).

Is this your first time here? Welcome!

Did you follow the link from the badge on a friend’s blog? Welcome! Please check out our submission guidelines, then jump right in. We’d love to have you.  We’ll be back on our regular schedule come August 24, but why not check out our summer series in the meantime?  It’s a great chance to get to know the community and work on your writing so you’ll be in tip-top shape when the regular grids open again!

Did you land here out of curiosity because you saw a whole bunch of hits from yeah write in your wordpress.com stats? Welcome! That means somebody at yeah write stumbled over your post, thought it was a good fit for us, and submitted your post for consideration. We hope you don’t mind!

If you like, please grab the challenge badge from our sidebar, install it using the HTML view of your post, then visit the other entries on the grid. You’re just in time to vote for the best submissions in the writing challenge. In the spirit of yeah write, even though someone else may have added your post on your behalf, please don’t vote for yourself. Let our community rally around your awesomeness.

The challenge grid is open for popular voting!

The challenge grid crowd favorite and top row winners will be determined by popular vote. Be cautioned: yeah write isn’t an Internet clicking contest, and the votes are moderated for fairness. Read each post before voting.

Everybody gets three votes

We use scaled voting each week for the challenge grid. This week, we each technically get two votes because there are between 11 and 20 entries, but it’s the last week before the summer series so let’s all have fun with an extra vote! Click on the thumbnails to read each post before voting. Click on the nifty heart-shaped voting icon to vote for the post after reading. Do not vote for your own post, please.  We’ll delete your vote.  We’re not kidding.  Trust us, it’ll be OK if you vote for other people.

Read the posts before voting

We are responsible voters here at yeah write. Read, evaluate, vote on merit. Even though the grid was unmoderated this week, we’re still writing the yeah write way, and we want the votes to reflect it.

Voting is open until Thursday, 10:00 p.m. EDT

Winners’ post published Friday by noon

Once the voting ends, the challenge grid will sort itself from highest number of votes to the fewest. Ties are broken by number of page views. Until the winners’ post is published, none of the sorting will be official, but you can still get a good idea of where everyone ended up until the votes are validated.

Voting for yeah write #169 weekly writing challenge is open…