When I formulate the first sentences of my introductory paragraph, I always try to remember that our general interest flags easily when there is nothing that sparks it. I usually try to do this by finding a more personal and stylized beginning, e.g. I give some interesting background information or statistics or a quotation by a famous person or a surprising fact or a metaphor or a saying – there are many of these strategies. Here, I use, for example, a personal anecdote that I hope everybody can relate to.

Tom A. Vatar / Student no 933666 / 18 Dec 2020

Mass-Breeding and Slaughtering of Animals: the Ideas of Naturalness, Social Status and Human Ethics as Basis for the Decision to Kill Animals for Food

I was ambling along the meat counter of our local supermarket in the evening after uni and I was estimating how many people it would take to buy and eat this incredible mass of dead animal produce that I could marvel at on this roughly 15 metres of refrigerated display counter. I also noticed that only about five per cent of all the meat was marked with an animal welfare label. This made my mind wander off immediately to fantasizing about how those animals whose meat was not labelled with this sticker might have spent their lives and what cruel death they might have met.

No comma?

No comma. There is no comma in this first passage. However, some of you might have felt compelled (like me) to put a comma here and there. It's true, such a comma could be one after a coordinating ’and’, which is optional in English, but I have not put a comma here because I can see no reason to separate off the second part of this sentence. The second part is closely connected with the first, so I put no comma.

This impulse to put a comma might often be based on the interfering thought that there certainly would be a comma in a German passage of this size.

So, in general: if in doubt, i.e. if you do not see a clear reason or rule to put a comma, do not put one.

… I was ambling along the meat counter of our local supermarket in the evening after work and I was estimating how many people …