From Lynn TrussÃs book: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation :
“One of the comma heavyweight championship bouts of the 20th century played out between Harold Ross, the legendary editor of The New Yorker, and the equally legendary humorist James Thurber. Ross was a pro-comma kind of guy. Thurber was of the less-is-more school, but since Ross was the editor, he generally had the last word. Thurber was asked by a correspondent why he used a comma in the sentence, “After dinner, the men went into the living-room.” His answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. ‘This particular comma,’ Thurber explained, ‘was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.’ ”
My local library has a waiting list of four hundred for this book on punctuation. No, I didn’t make it 401.