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Might be school specific but back in school my teacher told us to really hold on tight to grammar rules for dear life and never start a sentence with and/but and so on. But boy do i find it effective to toss all of that aside and really toy with the reading voice in your head. Grammar can be all what i want it to be! And many stylistic elements of literature only got their status because someone broke the rules with them and it was effective.
So I CAN use commas in dialogue to symbolize a pause in speech!
You absolutely can :)
Though i like to use commata to symbolize someone being really hasty in speech or panicked in a scene. I find your reading voice becomes way faster if you use a lot of commata. When i want a pause in dialogue, i usually do something like ""So it really was-" His shoulders became heavy with the realization. "Henry?""
Though of course things might work differently depending on who uses it how and where.