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I have a student who made the following sentence

"But at least, I figured out what I would like to do from now on and how to deal with the trauma."

I would like to remove the comma after "at least," but I can't find an exact reason. Is there a grammar rule for this?

Thank you!

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    Seems odd to have a comma after "at least" but not before, if it's parenthetical. There don't seem to be firm rules on comma usage these days, but if you look at comma questions here, there is a lot of discussion.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Apr 6, 2023 at 10:10
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    I really hate to have to tell you this, but commas are not determined in English by grammar. Say it out loud and you will hear that the comma does not belong in the writing, because it's not audible in the sentence. The actual sign comma "," is used to represent a number of intonations in English writing, but the intonation has to be there in the first place, which means orally. If it sounds wrong, it is wrong; there isn't any grammar rule for it. All those "grammar rules" were made up by amateurs trying to explain (what they thought was) their own use.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Apr 6, 2023 at 15:42
  • Thank you so much Stuart and John, that makes a lot of sense. I'll try explaining it to my student.
    – Anna
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 4:38

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As I have written before, and @JohnLawler comments, punctuation is not a question of grammar in English (unlike German, for example). Fashions in punctuation change (nineteenth century authors punctuated rather differently), so when I make a suggestion based on one style of contemporary punctuation, that is exactly what I mean. There are other styles.

So, in one style of contemporary punctuation, commas, semicolons, colons and periods/full stops indicate pauses of differing lengths in the way a sentence would be spoken. The purpose of this is to help the reader to read the sentence fluently and to understand it. In the example the poster gives, I personally would either:

  1. Not pause for the phrase “at least”, in which case I would omit the comma:

But at least I figured out…

or

  1. Pause for the phrase “at least”, in which case I would insert a comma before, as well as after, it:

But, at least, I figured out…

I would regard it is a personal choice between the two, and I would probably prefer the second. However many people (or at least my wife) would say that I over-punctuate. Read it aloud and make your own decision.

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    I would interpret these two uses of "at least" differently. It's parenthetical in #2 and could be omitted. In #1, you can omit "but".
    – Barmar
    Commented Apr 6, 2023 at 22:33
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    It's typically a change in tone (e.g. a drop in pitch), not (just) a pause.
    – alphabet
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 0:17
  • Thank you! I'll explain it to my student.
    – Anna
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 4:39
  • @Barmar — OK, but the principle I am suggesting is that the writer knows what he wants to convey and how he would say it, and so should punctuate to make this clear.
    – David
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 8:22
  • @alphabet — Can be. But the principle is the same.
    – David
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 8:22

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