Flexibility can work. Really.

Bill Walsh offers his characteristic common-sense approach on commas in his latest post at Blogslot.

Commas are situational, he says.

With the hyphen, I'm generally a fan of consistency. ...

But when it comes to punctuation's other most confusing critter, I like flexibility. Do I use a comma to introduce a quotation? It depends. Do I use a comma after an introductory clause? It depends -- and not only on the length of that clause.

And he offers the perfect example of a situation in which you should lose the commas you'd generally use.