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Can anyone justify the presence and absence of comma after first in the sentences below?

  1. First we’ll create a screen for the user to log in.
  2. First, we’ll define the AniJS helper and then we’ll declare the before animation function.
RegDwigнt
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iJade
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  • It's a style choice. There are very few hard and fast rules for commas. Either one is valid. – ElendilTheTall Jul 04 '14 at 09:02
  • The comma is required. – Kris Jul 04 '14 at 10:41
  • When reading them, would you pause after the first word? My advice would be to put a comma if you'd pause, and not otherwise. I'm curious as to why @Kris thinks it's required. – Rupe Jul 04 '14 at 10:52
  • @Rupe What if the other person reading the sentence doesn't pause.Does it become grammatically incorrect then..?? :) – iJade Jul 04 '14 at 11:03
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    @iJay I don't understand your question. It's up to the writer not the reader. And neither pausing nor not-pausing would be ungrammatical. This is a style thing. – Rupe Jul 04 '14 at 11:11
  • Pauses have nothing to do with grammar (you can pause mid-word), and neither does punctuation (there is no punctuation at all in speech). Also, the verb is log in. It's "I log in, he logs in, we logged in, they are logging in", and not "I login, he logins, we loginned, they are loginning." Lastly (there you go, I am about to use a comma), if you don't have the time to spell out such short basic words as "you", then just save yourself the trouble of commenting at all. And "plz" is the exact opposite of "please". It is quite disrespectful. – RegDwigнt Jul 04 '14 at 13:52
  • @RegDwigнt Log in & login both exist in both noun and verb form in the writing of educated people. Sometimes they imply different things. – Kris Jul 05 '14 at 06:16
  • First, the comma is not a grammar issue. That said, the clause at the beginning of the sentence is introductory and the rest of the sentence is fully independent in the sense it can stand on its own. Therefore, the word/phrase/clause at the beginning is always set off with a comma. For more examples, see the beginnings of the sentences in this comment. Finally, I don't think this is a matter of style even. – Kris Jul 05 '14 at 06:20

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