"Some shifts in punctuation practice make their way, over time, to grammar books and official acceptance. Imagine Jane Austen starting a book today with the sentence, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.' Her editor would take both commas out. But despite the love it gets from the masses, logical punctuation isn't likely to break through to the rule-keepers any time soon. The old way is just too established. When I asked Feal and Carol Saller, who oversees the Chicago Manual of Style, if there was a chance their organizations would go over to the other side, they both replied, in essence: 'How about never? Is never good for you?' What's likely is a more and more pronounced separation between official and unofficial practice. That is, prose published by established entities will follow the traditional rules, while everyone else will follow logic."
Ben Yagoda discusses the rise of "logical punctuation" in Slate.
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