Grammar Girl here, today guest writer Bonnie Trangas is going to tell us how one little comma

can change the meaning of a sentence.

Should we write, he has the ball too, with no comma, or he has the ball comma too.

Well, you can write the sentence either way, it's up to you as the writer.

A comma before the two gives the sentence just a slightly different meaning than the

sentence without one.

The word too is an adverb that indicates also or in addition.

It most often shows up in the middle or at the end of a sentence.

Most of the time you probably won't use a comma with too, because your sentence will

be chugging along without needing a pause.

So you could say I too like reading mysteries, or I like reading mysteries too, with no

commas.

If on the other hand, you want to emphasize an abrupt change of thought you do use commas,

which among other things are used to indicate pauses.

I comma too comma, like reading mysteries, or I like reading mysteries comma too.

In these sentences, you're adding a pause to create emphasis.

There's no writer wrong here, comma or no comma after too is really up to you, and the

context of the paragraph where the two sentence is.

If you want to emphasize your thought, you can add the comma to slow the sentence down.

If no emphasis is necessary, then no comma is necessary.

You might be faced with this comma conundrum when using other short transitional adverbs,

such as therefore and however.

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