"The basic exception is that starting commas are optional" "In cases where starting commas are optional, it is recommended that you don't put one".
Ah.
I think the problem for English native speakers is that our commas are mostly "put one where you would pause", apart from the defining v non-defining relative clauses ones, where they change the meaning. And then when you encounter a language that *always* puts a comma before "which" or "that" BECAUSE GRAMMAR, either we expect to pause, which doesn't make sense, e.g. "he said, that..." or we take it as a meaningful comma not a non-meaningful comma and get confused. Finnish does this as well. And teaching Finns that sometimes they needed to put a comma before "that" or "which" and sometimes they didn't, and that this was important, was rather difficult.
no subject
"In cases where starting commas are optional, it is recommended that you don't put one".
Ah.
I think the problem for English native speakers is that our commas are mostly "put one where you would pause", apart from the defining v non-defining relative clauses ones, where they change the meaning. And then when you encounter a language that *always* puts a comma before "which" or "that" BECAUSE GRAMMAR, either we expect to pause, which doesn't make sense, e.g. "he said, that..." or we take it as a meaningful comma not a non-meaningful comma and get confused. Finnish does this as well. And teaching Finns that sometimes they needed to put a comma before "that" or "which" and sometimes they didn't, and that this was important, was rather difficult.