Punctuation Help 101: Powerful Writing Help through Comma Usage (Part 2 of 2)

The comma (Part 2 of 2)

The most misused of all marks–the comma–will appear before you in a new way: clearly and understandably. The second step rests on mastery of its more stylistic uses.

With appositives

Appositives rename nouns:

• California’s capital, Sacramento, lies in northern California.
• Jim’s brother John will be here shortly.

Sacramento and John are appositives because they gave us another name for the nouns capital and brother. What does this have to do with comma usage? A great deal.

Did you notice that the first example has commas around its appositive while the second example doesn’t have commas around its? Why? Well . . .

Say I have two brothers: Jim and Tom. I tell you:

• My brother is going to visit us later tonight.

“Which brother?” you say in wonder. To be more specific, I add the appositive Jim:

• My brother (Jim) is going to visit us later tonight.

Should commas surround Jim? The answer: no, if the appositive limits the possible meanings of the noun it renames; and yes, if it doesn’t limit its possible meanings. Our answer then is–no. Why? Because brother, by itself, has two possible meanings–Jim or Tom–adding our appositive–Jim–limits the meaning to only Jim. To contrast, what does this sentence imply?

• My brother, Jim, is going to visit us later tonight.

Commas surround Jim, so we know that it doesn’t limit the possible meanings of brother; therefore, I know the writer of the sentence has only one brother–Jim.

Real-world examples from the NYTimes.com:

• “The McCain, Graham, Warner trio really fought back and prevented the administration from winning its effort to reinterpret Common Article 3,” said Jennifer Daskal, the United States advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.
• Our appositive, in bold, doesn’t limit the possible meanings of Jennifer Daskal–there is only one such person–so commas are used.

• But Japan is the country that elevated the American quality guru W. Edwards Deming to virtual sainthood and conquered global markets with its eminently reliable cars, cameras and computers.
• Our appositive, in bold, limits the possible meanings of the American quality guru–it could be any American businessperson–by narrowing down the possibilities to one–W. Edwards Deming–so no commas are used.

To expand: we can apply this principle to all extra information–information added to a sentence’s subject-verb core. When information “limits” or gives important details, don’t use commas; and, when it doesn’t “limit” but only gives non-essential details, use commas.

Practice

To clarify, inspect this real-world example taken from the essay My Father Is a Book, written by Janna Malamud Smith and published in the 2004 edition of The Best American Essays series. Identify only the non-essential information set off or enclosed by commas and ignore all other comma uses:

• When I was seventeen or so, I read William Faulkner’s novel As I lay Dying, about a poor Southern family. As you might recall, the youngest boy, Vardamon, has caught a large fish the same day his mother dies, and in the density of emotion he becomes confused, merging her with the dead creature that the assembled mourners eventually cook and eat. “My mother is a fish,” he observes, and then intones the expression to himself, a wacko mantra that–in the midst of the grievous chaos and staggering adult incompetence–becomes his guidepost, the queer story he tells himself.

To check your work, non-essential information appears in bold, and where two such bits of information come together, we’ve underlined one to distinguish it from the other:

• When I was seventeen or so, I read William Faulkner’s novel As I lay Dying, about a poor Southern family. As you might recall, the youngest boy, Vardamon, has caught a large fish the same day his mother dies, and in the density of emotion he becomes confused, merging her with the dead creature that the assembled mourners eventually cook and eat. “My mother is a fish,” he observes, and then intones the expression to himself, a wacko mantra that–in the midst of the grievous chaos and staggering adult incompetence–becomes his guidepost, the queer story he tells himself.

Break down:

• , about a poor southern family.
• non-essential information
• ,Vardamon,
• appositive for boy
• , merging her with the dead creature that the assembled mourners eventually cook and eat.
• non-essential information
• , a wacko matra that–in the midst of the grievous chaos and staggering adult incompetence–becomes his guidepost,
• appositive for expression
• , the queer story he tells himself.
• appositive for guidepost

Now from what remains, identify the essential information:

• When I was seventeen or so, I read William Faulkner’s novel As I lay Dying. As you might recall, the youngest boy has caught a large fish the same day his mother dies, and in the density of emotion he becomes confused. “My mother is a fish,” he observes, and then intones the expression to himself.

Essential information appears in bold:

• When I was seventeen or so, I read William Faulkner’s novel As I lay Dying. As you might recall, the youngest boy has caught a large fish the same day his mother dies, and in the density of emotion he becomes confused. “My mother is a fish,” he observes, and then intones the expression to himself.

Break down:

• As I Lay Dying
• appositive for novel
• his mother dies
• essential information
• in the density of emotion
• essential information
• to himself
• essential information

Know that determining whether some pieces of information are essential or non-essential lies with the writer and not with formal rules, so develop your own style with commas. And for a little solace when you run into murky comma waters, a quote from a late, great writer:

• I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
• Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

Done. Remember: everything takes time to master, and comma usage is no different; but, the mastery will reward those who put out the effort with a degree of clarity in writing that will make it well worth it.