Let’s start talking about COMMAS.
I am going to dip my toe into the river that is Comma, and take a look at some really obvious, glaring mistakes I see people making with comma use. The first mistake we’re going to look at is the bad habit of putting commas around information that is essential to the meaning of the sentence.
One of the roles of the comma is to add information that is nice to know but not absolutely necessary to the sentence. The rule is that you must be able to remove the information (and any adjacent commas) and still have a sentence that makes sense.
Let’s look at this sentence:
Certified yoga instructor, Michelle Owens, will lead a class that beginners and experienced yoga practitioners alike will enjoy.
Here, the information added is the name of the yoga instructor, “Michelle Owens.”
However, if you take the name of this “certified yoga instructor” out of the sentence, does it make sense?
No, it doesn’t.
You could say this:
A certified yoga instructor, Michelle Owens, will lead a class that beginners and experienced yoga practitioners alike will enjoy.
You could also say this:
Michelle Owens, a certified yoga instructor, will lead a class that beginners and experienced yoga practitioners alike will enjoy.
But that’s not what was said. “Michelle Owens” is necessary to the meaning of the sentence as written, and so those commas are incorrect.
Let’s look at another sentence:
Her husband, Bill, came with her.
If you took the information in between the commas (which is called “parenthetical” information), out of the sentence, you’d have: Her husband came with her. No problem there.
Here’s another example:
My dog, Grace, came with me.
I have one dog. Her name is Grace. “Grace” has to be in between commas.
Okay. Here’s a wrinkle.
I have two dogs. Their names are Grace and Penny. Grace came with me, and Penny stayed home.
My dog Grace came with me.
It is necessary to specify which dog came with me, so “Grace” becomes necessary to the meaning of the sentence. No commas.
Here’s why I thought I’d start this conversation, and here’s why it’s so important that you put out promotional materials that are correct.
When you are going to give a program about punctuation and grammar to an authors group, it’s just a tad provoking to find that the person putting together the host’s flyer has gone in and changed your text, the text you spent hours working on, introducing no fewer than eight mistakes. It’s really a terrific example of what you don’t want to happen!
One of the mistakes that were made was introducing commas where there were none before.
Let’s look at this sentence and focus first on the commas surrounding my name:
The guest speaker is author, editor, and professional speaker, Liz Coursen, who will discuss, “WRITE Right, Right NOW! An EXCITING Editing Workshop.”
The rule is that when the commas are removed around the information about the “guest speaker,” the sentence still makes sense. Does it? No. The name of the “guest speaker” is necessary to the meaning of the sentence, which makes the comma in front of my name incorrect. Did I have that comma there in the original sentence? No, no I did not.
Oh, but there’s more! Is the name of the workshop necessary to the meaning of the sentence? Why yes, yes it is. So the comma after “discuss” is incorrect as well. Two extra commas, two mistakes—neither made by me. Damn it!
Did the woman who “edited” my information and inserted the mistakes attend my workshop? Despite a personal, if glacial, invitation, no, no she did not.
So, lesson learned: Tell people you want your promo material put out JUST LIKE YOU WROTE IT. I wouldn’t think you’d have to say it but, obviously, you do.
More on commas soon. Just be thinking about them, okay?