>>31331429>Also I fear using too many , in my stories, It really makes me seem lazy about cutting up my sentences and a crutch to not know when to break them up.I like to sprinkle in a few semi-colons in every so often when a paragraph either has too many commas or if I'm trying to avoid short sentences. They're easy to use, just make sure that the information on both sides of the semi-colon are relevant to each other and that both sides of it are readable as their own individual sentences if the semi-colon were to be replaced with a period. Writing one sentence around a semi-colon might cause you to rewrite the adjacent sentences a bit to account for it, and they're useful for making a short sentence a bit longer (so long as the second half of the semi-colon stays relevant) if you don't like using short sentences (which I don't), but using them too often can lead you back to square one with the comma issue. Judge well and use them when most appropriate.
And as for commas, some authors shit on using them too often and others shit on not using them often enough, it's really up to personal preference so long as you don't spam them everywhere and you use them properly. I like to think of commas as curves in a river (the paragraph), and periods as beaver dams; the periods will pause the flow for just a second before continuing, and commas will "curve" the flow and lead it into a new direction, giving that slight sense of inertia (like while turning in a car) but with word processing in your head. Too many commas (curves) leaves the reader dizzy and looks messy, but not enough will make the flow boring, quick, and straightforward. Sentence length and the information within those sentences also makes this a bit context sensitive, as usual with writing tips, so use your better judgement when writing and structuring to figure out a good balance for what you need.
