Improper Comma Use: Angry Edition

Let me introduce you to my friend the comma. This is him: ,

He may not look like much, but boy oh BOY can he make a difference. In the book A Dash of Style, author Noah Lukeman doesn’t dance around the problem with this punctuation mark: “the comma is schizophrenic.”

Lynne Truss’s ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’ (which, incidentally, is a fantastic read) articulates the problem with commas: not all commas serve the same function.

“More than any other mark, the comma draws our attention to the mixed origin of modern punctuation, and its consequent mingling of two distinct functions: 1) to illuminate the grammar of a sentence; 2) to point up—rather in the manner of musical notation—such literary qualities as rhythm, direction, pitch, tone, and flow. This is why grown men have knock-down fights over the comma in editorial offices: because these two rules of punctuation sometimes collide head-on—indeed, where the comma is concerned, they do it all the time.”

(See? I told you it was good.)

Long story short, commas mess with your head.

A post to exhaustively fix all of the comma problems that make me want to pull out my fingernails with a pair of tweezers would be far too long for this blog. Instead, it would be a thesis, or possibly a year’s worth of posts in a new blog altogether. So for the sake of everyone’s well-being, Angry Edition will focus on a very particular comma problem that makes me go home and drink: titles vs. appositives. Ready? Here we go.

1. The TITLE.

I especially see this problem in newswriting, because we use titles every time we introduce a person. Example: “President Barack Obama admitted yesterday that he is a very tall man.” In this sentence, ‘President’ is, obviously, Barack Obama’s title. Got it. That’s easy. Let’s try another: “Plane crash survivor Evangeline Lilly commented on the tragedy.” This is a little bit trickier, because ‘plane crash survivor’ is not the kind of thing that you put on your business card. A more conventional example is this: “Junior sports management major Megan Erbes sits next to me in class.” This is like ‘plane crash survivor.’ Both are long descriptive tags, but they function as titles. Why am I telling you this?

BECAUSE UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU EVER, EVER, EVER USE A COMMA HERE.

“Junior sports management major, Megan Erbes” is WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG (etc.). Why? Because ‘Megan Erbes’ is what all those words in front of it are modifying. Putting a comma in there makes it look like ‘Megan Erbes’ are throwaway words (aka, an appositive—we’ll get to that). Would you write “President, Barack Obama admitted…blah blah blah”? No, you wouldn’t. ‘President’ is treated as if it is part of his name. Well, ‘Junior sports management major’ is now part of Megan Erbes’ name. (Sorry for all those initials, Megan. Hope you weren’t planning to monogram anything anytime soon.)

We fixed a huge problem with this is in the paper last week (and good thing—I might have had an apoplectic attack if it had printed). One of the headlines read: “ONU alum, VonAlmen wins audition.” (Or something to that effect.) NO no no. Why? Because ‘ONU grad’ is modifying ‘VonAlmen.’ Don’t make VonAlmen look like a throwaway. It should have read (and did read) like this: “ONU alum VonAlmen wins audition.”

Even though this mistake puts me in a tizzy, I can understand why it’s confusing. The reason is this:

2. The APPOSITIVES.

I think appositives are really cool. It lets you include long titles or descriptors without making the sentence confusing. Appositives are framed by commas—it’s basically the equivalent of parentheses. An appositive looks like this:

“Barack Obama, president of the United States, admitted last week that he was very tall.”

See what just happened there? Instead of ‘President Barack Obama’, we stuck his title after his name. This sentence is the equivalent of:

“Barack Obama (president of the United States) admitted last week that he was very tall.”

Cool, huh? I can also say this:

“Megan Erbes, a junior sports management major, sits next to me in class.”

The important part of the subject is still Megan Erbes, but now we can throw away her title, because in this sentence it’s not really necessary to know that she’s a junior sports management major.

BUT WAIT… there’s more.

Sometimes a title is not really a title. Take this example:

“One of the plane crash survivors, Evangeline Lilly, was on site for the memorial service.”

I know, that just ripped a hole in your universe of titular perfection. But it makes sense. In this case, ‘Evangeline Lilly’ is acting as an appositive. Her name is less important than the fact that she is one of the survivors. And there’s another difference. Check out this example:

“Plane crash survivor Evangeline Lilly was on site for the memorial service.”

In the first example, the sentence could stand alone without the name, because it has already been established that there is one specific survivor to whom the author refers. In the second case, “Plane crash survivor was on site for the memorial service” is not good English.

(Note: “A plane crash survivor, Evangeline Lilly, was present…” would be correct, however. The article “a” indicates that there is one particular survivor.)

What it all boils down to is that you have to be able to identify your subject. Is your subject Megan Erbes? Or is it a plane crash survivor? Is your title just a bunch of adjectives, or is it acting as a noun phrase? Ah, grammar. A good test is trying to take out different parts of the sentence. If you can take out the name, it is an appositive. Frame it with commas. If you can take out the title (**and it comes AFTER the name), frame it with commas. If you can take out the title but it comes BEFORE the name, it is most likely a title and should NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT have a comma.

Use good sense. And use commas correctly. And then I won’t have to come to your house and break your stuff. Win-win-win situation.