Separated by a Common Language

Brilliant points spot on

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The example that springs to MY mind is:
Reader, I married him.

Pernille.

That's how I was taught to do it in school in America in the 90s. It felt so ridiculous that I only ever did that for a handful of exercises in 6th grade.

I've been searching the internet for someone who's noticed this too - isn't it an incredibly annoying phenomenon? I've only really noticed it over the past year or so but it seems suddenly ubiquitous, including, sadly, on the BBC; I don't know if there was a change in teaching in a certain year and that generation is now occupying roles writing for websites and newspapers.

I think your first example is more correct but I don't mind the second, except it only works if there's a context referring to an actor to begin with, to which Paltrow's name is simply additional information. What are worse - and what I've noticed often - are sentences without the definite article at all, for example:

Prime Minister, Theresa May, announced today.

instead of

Prime Minister Theresa May announced today.
or
The Prime Minister, Theresa May, announced today.

You might think that's a daft example but it's exactly the (conspicuously ridiculous) sentence structure I see *all the time*, and it's driving me crazy.

I've seen this fairly often in British news reports over the past few years. My feeling is that it's a form of hypercorrection by people who remember the requirement for parenthetical commas in "Gwynneth Paltrow, the actor, received an Oscar" and retain them when reversing the order to "The actor, Gwynneth Paltrow, received an Oscar". I agree with the previous Anonymous (I must sign up) that the latter would only be correct in a rather unlikely context that previously mentioned an unnamed actor, as in "For (named movie) both composer and leading lady received awards. The actor, Gwynneth Paltrow, received an Oscar, while the composer, WA Mozart, was awarded a Grammy". To my mind the 'The Prime Minister' example works only because there is only one Prime Minister, so her name is additional information, while there are quite a few actors so the name will always be essential.

72-year-old BrE native here, and I would have inserted a comma after 'here', as I did above, as well as hyphenating the age phrase. Slight evidence for punctuation use diminishing over time. (As an aside, I find I can't read Dickens, because his too-frequent-by-modern-standards commas stop me reading with fluency and I can't get into the books.)

I don't think Kate would write, Dear, Lynne. I don't know that anyone would. Hello, Lynne, is the example she used, and that's very different.

From the US here. In elementary school, our rule of thumb was that when reading aloud, you do not need a comma to pause, but you always pause when there is a comma. It doesn't need to be a huge pause or anything. I put a comma between Happy Birthday and Lynne, and I hear a slight pause between Happy Birthday and Lynne. It's only a fraction of a second, but it's there.

However, I don't think a comma's sole responsibility is telling a speaker where they should pause. The grammatical role of the comma is much more important than spoken (or rather, not spoken) pauses.

Surely 'the grammatical role of the comma' is to assist a reader in parsing a sentence in the way the writer meant, which is why it is more difficult to read unpunctuated text because the reader has to garner parsing clues from text elements. A comma will often coincide with a pause when text is read aloud, because pausing is a part of the way we indicate parsing, but that is not their purpose; if it were, surely we would find it unnecessary to punctuate text that was not meant to be spoken. The other parts when speaking are stress and intonation, which differ for commas and full stops (and ? and !) (ignoring up-speak) and usually for colons and semicolons.

Agreed there's an intonational shift in Kathy murders, Lynne. But I can easily say Happy birthday Lynne with no such shift.

I could read

It looks as if Lynne (a character in the fiction being discussed) is going to steal Kathy's handsome suitor. But in the next chapter Kathy murders Lynne

using exactly the same intonation and lack of pause as in

Happy birthday Lynne.

It's a case of the difference between an extended text and an isolated sentence. To say out of nowhere

Kathy murders Lynne

involves at least secondary emphasis of each words. I would almost certainly place the main stress (and falling intonation) on LYNNE.

Reading the extended text, I would probably put the same sort of stress and intonation on MURders as I would on BIRTHday.

Indeed, I thought when I was writing that a pause was not quite the correct word, but I couldn't think how better to describe it. I think there is a small pause in there as well as the change in intonation.

But you have answered my question. I would never write a comma in "Happy Birthday Lynne", because I would never change the intonation there. You, as someone who writes a comma there also speak what I wrongly described as a pause.

If I say "Happy birthday week" I get a different intonational pattern than if I say "Happy birthday, Mark". There's an emphasis on the name that I don't think would be there for other non-vocative things that could go after 'HB'. But, as we say in America, your mileage may vary.

I can say Happy birthday Mark with a variety of intonation patterns. But my instinctive first choice is identical to that of Happy birthday week.

I think you may have just hit the nail on the head here, because I'd definitely say "Happy birthday, Cat" (my best friend's name) slightly differently than I'd say "happy birthday cat" -- I can't say the second one without it bringing to mind a little dancing cat with a birthday hat on (sort of a cartoon cat, because he's black and up on his two back paws and sort of a step above being a stick figure, and I can see it so plainly that if I was any kind of an artist I could draw it -- and I can't say the phrase minus the comma and think of anything but).

I suspect the "comma represents a pause in speech" comes from teaching it to young children -- I think I first learned it about in 4th grade (British year 5, around age 9 or 10). Calling it a prosodic intonational boundary might be more correct, but would possibly go over their heads, also. I'm pretty sure it would have been over mine.

Sorry! I failed to delete a comma. My first paragraph should read:

Well I agree that there's no pause, but I would never put a comma there. As Lynne says, it's a question of intonational units. In this case

• The actor Gwynneth Paltrow is one unit, with the stress on PAL, and the voice rising or holding steady at the end.
• received an Oscar is one unit, with the stress on OSC and the voice falling over the word Oscar.

A rule can be an exemption from another rule: if rule A applies everywhere except in those cases where rule B applies, that makes B an exemption from A.

Suppose your sentence in full to be The one who did this is a monster. The relative clause is integral; remove it and you get The one is a monster. As a stand-alone sentence, this is grammatical but incoherent.

This is a good point, however. Perhaps tellingly, it doesn't apply to German (except the stylistically highest variants), where the definite article is identical to the most common demonstrative pronoun, so the sentence would be interpreted as "that one is a monster".

Yes, but there is no general rule in English along the lines of

Finite clauses are separated by commas from the rest of a sentence.

Something like this, as far as I can tell, constitutes a rule in German, and also a rule in Russian.

Now there is a rule in English

Components such as relative clauses or appositive noun phrases are not separated by commas when they are integrated within a noun phrase

This second rule is not an exemption from the first. It's part of the evidence that the first rule has no existence in English.

Further evidence includes
• the unacceptability of He said, that he was ready.
• the acceptability of I'll be there when see her.

I think the actual general rule of English is something like this

Finite clauses may be separated from the rest of the sentence by commas, provided that they are not integrated into a higher-level structure

By higher level structure I'm thinking of

• FINITE CLAUSE He said that he was ready
• NON-FINITE CLAUSE saying that he was ready
• NOUN PHRASE the belief that he was ready

If you really want a GENERAL RULE + EXEMPTION framework, I suppose you could start with the contrary of the German rule.

GENERAL Clauses and appositive noun phrases within a higher-level structure are not separated by commas.

EXEMPTION Commas may be used to separate clauses or appositive noun phrase to signal that they are not integrated within the higher-level structure.

I speak of signalling because I believe that we make a communicative choice based so much not on objective facts in the real world as on how we choose to view and represent selected facts.

Take the song I wish that I could shimmy like my sister Kate. The way some grammatical explanations are worded suggests that the absence of a comma means that I have more than one sister.

I disagree. All that this punctuation implies is that I have one woman in mind. The fact that she is a sister and the fact that her name is Kate are of equal importance. Any other facts are irrelevant. I may have another sister, more than one perhaps, but she/they are far from my thoughts if, indeed, they exist.

Even I wish that I could shimmy like my sister, Kate don't necessarily imply — though punctuation or through intonation — that she is my only sister. Yes, that may be the case, but all my utterance shows is that I have one sister in mind, and that I've made a second communicative choice viz to name her. (This may be motivated by social factors. My hearer/reader may know Kate. Or I may be creating an illusion of intimate knowledge.) The two facts about this woman are not equally relevant: when I made my first communicative choice, the fact of her being a sister to me was salient; when I made my second choice, it was an afterthought.

If there is a general rule in English, it's practically the contrary of the German/Russian rules. Something like

GENERAL Finite clauses (and non-finite clause) are not separated from the rest of the sentence by commas.

We then need

EXEMPTION 1 Finite clauses (and non-finite clause) may be separated by commas at boundaries between coordinate clauses or between superordinate and subordinate clauses.

EXEMPTION 2 Commas may be used to separate clauses or appositive noun phrase to signal that they are not integrated within the higher-level structure.

I see one can still not edit one's comments, so I will just use the "reply" function to add something vital: )

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In the past we could edit through duplication followed by deletion. (You can delete your own post.) I'll try to do the same in this new format.

Yes it still works. I thought it would, but I was afraid the duplicate might not appear in the right place on the page.

But "Dear Lynne" and "Hi, Lynne" have different syntaxes. "Dear Lynne" is all vocative. And that, dear reader, is why there can't be a comma separating "Dear" from "Lynne".

The 'historical rules of comma usage' are more recent than you'd think. The notion that a comma marks a pause is much older. The original function of a comma was perceived to be an aid to reading aloud, marking a pause shorter than a colon and shorter still than a period.

The rise of punctuation as a grammar marker was often not obvious to previous generations. Nor did it completely trump the pause principle until the nineteenth century. The immensely influential Lindley Murray (1745-1826) ruled that a comma was necessary between a lengthy subject expression audits verb (not that he could give a satisfactory definition of of long). David Crystal in Making a Point, The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation quotes two examples of Murray's own usage


A conjugation added to the verb, shows the manner of being ...

These writers assert, that the verb has no variation from the indicative ...

I suspect that Murray, and grammarians before him, did have a sort of pause in mind — but not an audible pause made when reading aloud. Rather, I think, they conceived of a pause of though on the part of the silent reader, to digest the long(-ish) complex(-ish) phrase that had just been encountered.

There's something comparable today — in British English if not in American — when the verb after a lengthy subject is is. For example

The outcome of this complex history is [PAUSE] is something unexpected.

By common consent, this is based on, but by no means syntactically comparable to

What the outcome of this complex history is [PAUSE] is something unexpected.

Over here we here sentences like this a fair bit on the radio. People seem to avoid them in writing, no doubt because the problem of punctuation would be horrendous.

Unfortunately, Crystal doesn't discuss what we're calling 'vocative' use. But he does quote some interesting examples from Shakespeare, suggesting what his printers thought about punctuating it.

A Globe Theatre text reproducing the punctuation of the First Folio:

Let each man render me his bloody hand.
First Marcus Brutus will I shake with you;
Next Caius Cassius do I take your hand;
Now Decius Brutus yours; now yours Metellus;
Yours Cinna; and my valiant Caska, yours;
Though last, not least in love, yours good Trebonius.

Only one 'vocative'-marking comma — and that after the name.

However, Crystal also quotes this passage from Henry IV Part 1 with a facsimile reproducing the First Folio spelling, punctuation and typeface. Prince Hal and Poins are interrupting each other's conversation with the servant Francis.

At first glance, the printer seems to following the 'vocative comma' rule.

Prin. How long haſt thou to ſerve, Francis?
Fran. Forsooth fiue yeares,and as much as to-----------
Poin. Francis.
Fran. Anon,anon ſir.
Prin. Fiue years : Betlady a long Leaſe for the clin-
king of Pewter. But Francis, dareſt thou be ſo valiant aſ
to play the coward with thy Indenture; & ſhew it a faire
paire of heels,and run from it?
Fran. O Lord ſir, Ile be ſworne vpon all the Books in
England,I could find in my heart.
Poin. Francis.
Fran. Anon,anon ſir.
Prin. How old art thou,Francis?
Fran. Let me ſee, about Michaelmas I ſhalbe-------
Poin. Francis.
Fran. Anon ſir, pray you ſtay a little,my Lord.
Prin. Nay but harke you Francis, for the Sugar thou
gauest me, 'twas a pennyworth, was't not?
Fran. O Lord ſir, I would it had bene two.

On second and more glances, the printer only uses a comma consistently only
• before the name Francis
• at the end of a sentence

In mid sentence we get

Nay but harke you Francis, for the Sugar thou
gauest me, 'twas a pennyworth, was't not?

Before sir the printer places no comma, even at the end of a sentence. Possibly this is because there is already a comma (without a space) after anon.

However, there is an example of comma (again without a space) before my Lord.

I think we can safely say that a consistent 'historical rule of comma usage for vocatives lies a fair way in the future after Shakespeare's time.

[By the way, Crystal cites this text not to illustrate comma usage but to show how dashes were extended as far as the right hand margin.]

And another thing markn

[or, if you prefer, And another thing, markn]

I can't say I share your admiration for the Wikipedia treatment of Apposition: Restrictive versus non-restrictive. Those subscript capitals labelling appositive phrase and phrase in apposition are unnecessarily confusing. And the definition of restrictive and non-restrictive in terms of meaning is about as bad as Lynne's bugbear "nouns are persons, places, or things" and "verbs are action words". Syntactical terms should be defined syntactically. the semantic stuff is useful only to people who already understand the syntax.

The actor Gwynneth Paltrow can be a syntactic unit known as a noun phrase — comparable to Henry the Fifth or The artist formerly known as Prince. Those explanatory words Gwynneth Paltrow and the Fifth and formerly known as Prince are each integrated into the noun phrase. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Languageactually uses the term integrated rather than restrictive.

Yes, we can legitimately ask

Which actor?
Which Henry?
Which artist?

but this is a syntactic test, not a test of meaning.

But we can also treat the actor, Gwynneth Paltrow as two syntactic units, with the words Gwynneth Paltrow not integrated but supplementary — the term preferred by the Cambridge Grammar in place of non-restrictive.

Syntax is a complex of abstract relationships — made concrete by visible writing or audible speech. To signal the syntactic intention:
• a writer separates a supplementary expression by commas
• a speaker marks a supplementary expression by use of intonation patterns

Intonation is not irrelevant in the way that pauses are irrelevant.

Aha!

A quote from David Crystal:

The contrast between restrictive and non-restrictive is clearly expressed through English intonation, and it's only natural to want to write this down.

Well, yes, intonation does mark restrictive vs. non-restrictive apposition in speech, just as commas mark the difference in writing. But the restrictiveness (if that's a word; there's probably a more proper linguistic term) is what's primary, not the intonation. A similar difference in intonation that DIDN'T mark restrictiveness wouldn't necessarily be marked by commas in writing. Crystal's quote seems entirely consistent with my view, that the restrictive contrast should be marked in writing, which was my point, in opposition to Solidus' post.

I agree that the definition of the difference between restrictive and non-restrictive as given in the wikipedia article does not seem satisfying, not least because they admit that the same sentence could be either, depending on context. But I'm not sure I follow how your reformulation in terms of supplementary expression improves the situation, other than giving the concept a different name. Whether "the actor(,) Gwyneth Paltrow" is one syntactic unit or two can't be determined by examining the structure of the sentence; it requires understanding the meaning and intention of the sentence, like it or not. When transcribing a spoken statement, one might use the speaker's intonation to determine whether a phrase is restrictive or not, but when composing ones own text, one can insert commas correctly without needing to hear the intonation of the text when spoken.

By "historical rules of comma usage", I didn't mean to imply that we should be looking back to Shakespeare's time, when punctuation was used quite differently than in modern text. I was only looking back to perhaps the 19th and 20th centuries (a harsher critic of my statements might say I was only looking back to what I was personally taught, in the mid 20th century).

Reviewing what you've written, I think we are in agreement that commas should be used to mark certain grammatical features, such as the restrictiveness of appositive phrases (or whatever you wish to call them), and should not be omitted (or inserted) frivolously. We may disagree only on the way to determine whether a phrase is restrictive or non-restrictive.

it requires understanding the meaning and intention of the sentence, like it or not

In my view, structure is the meaning and intention of the sentence.

when composing ones own text, one can insert commas correctly without needing to hear the intonation of the text when spoken.

I can't.

We may disagree only on the way to determine whether a phrase is restrictive or non-restrictive.

I don't see much disagreement on restrictive/non-restrictive. What we disagree on is the theme of this thread — whether commas are obligatory to separate what Lynne calls 'vocatives'.

I can't remember whether or not I was taught to write Happy birthday, NAME. I choose to write Happy birthday NAME because that's how I hear it. And I do hear (silently) what I write. Always.

A similar difference in intonation that DIDN'T mark restrictiveness wouldn't necessarily be marked by commas in writing.

Oh I think it would. Take the sentences

He came up finally with the solution.
He came up, finally, with the solution.

The two intonation patters echo the patterns of sentences with restrictive and non-restrictive expressions. And the commas reflect the patterns.

Dear, Lynne, is something you are to all your readers.
(Couldn't help myself)

My tendency is to omit commas from short sentences whose intonation should be clear and unambiguous.

In the case of Happy Birthday I would insert an exclamation (point/mark) instead.

Ignoring that for the sake of discussion: "Happy Birthday Lynne" omits the comma, but "'Happy Birthday, Lynne' I warmly greeted her." includes the comma for added clarity.

American Millenial btw for sake of data.

Zouk

I originally wrote

The outcome of this complex history is, is something unexpected.

But that made it about the comma, which I didn't want. So I put [PAUSE] instead.

I do think that it's a pause for thought — although,as you say, it may be of negligible auditory duration. And I do think that the restart with extra is is motivated by the same corners that made earlier grammarians insert a comma.

CORRECTION (It's that spellchecker again!)

motivated by the same corners

should be

motivated by the same concerns .

Zouk: I don't see any Comex, but there is no change to the spam detection here. I only moderate comments on 14+-day-old posts, as they attract more spam. When I see other spam, I delete it as soon as I can, but often Google's already got(ten) to it.

The "restart" was on Language Log once, because Obama says "the thing is is that..." a lot. Apparently "the-thing-is" as a single lexeme in his mind. (And he's not the only one, of course.)

Surely "Happy Birthday" would be headline capitalization and nothing else?

For me (American, age 56) it's always written capitalized. Happy Birthday, Joe. Happy Anniversary, Joe. Happy Bar Mitzvah, Joe. Happy Retirement, Joe. I wouldn't capitalize birthday, anniversary, bar mitzvah, or retirement at most other times and I always use a comma before the person's name. That's the way I was taught in grade school.

Sorry to be too technical. Let me try to simplify.

When comparing my poor dancing with my skilled relative, I have only one young woman in mind. I may have another sister. I may have several sisters. but if they exist they are far from my thoughts.

EITHER
My first and only thought is of the two equally relevant facts about the young woman: that she's my sister and her name is Kate. Hence

I wish that I could shimmy like my sister Kate.

OR
My first thought is of the fact that she's my sister. Then as an afterthought I name her. Hence

I wish that I could shimmy like my sister, Kate.

To reverse my sister and Kate makes for a very strange sentence. It would be strange to say and even stranger to write. If forced to do so, I'd probably write

I wish that I could shimmy like Kate. My sister.

the problem with your comma-using version

I wish that I could shimmy like Kate, my sister.

is that it looks uncomfortably like what Lynne calls a 'vocative', the equivalent of

My sister, I wish I could shimmy like Kate.

Yes, I did mean

I'll be there when you see her

I fixed it once, but my computer seized up and I pasted in a version that hadn't been fixed.

The point about

I'll be there when you see her

is that there's no comma between the two clauses. This is one item of evidence that English, unlike German, doesn't have a general rule that insists on commas always separating clauses.

A more typical use of the Oxford comma would be

She has a read dress, a white dress, and a blue dress.

I don't think ambiguity is a consideration.

A few years ago, I read a report of a book that had a dedication in which an Oxford comma would have been useful: "This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

Does she have three dresses, or only one?

I think my comma usage is heavily influenced by my computer programming background, so I use a lot of them to "group" my phrases. But I don't think that would help in this dress case.

Very nice introspection, David. I feel my process is similar. I am gratified that you are explicit about something I said in reply to a later (reading top-down, of course) comment: that punctuation is to assist a reader in parsing text as the writer meant it to be parsed. In assisting parsing, punctuation will also naturally help anyone reading the text aloud, but prosodically the oral version will follow on from the understanding of the text rather than being directed by the punctuation.

It is interesting that, as you note in a later comment, the first stabs at punctuation were intended to mark pauses of different lengths when reading text aloud. That would have been of some help in divining the author's meaning; but before that, text would have looked like the text messages I get from someone I know that include no punctuation at all and take longer to understand as a result.

I think you need a different sentence to make the final my sister plausible. For example

That isn't my department. You'll have to speak to Kate — my sister.

Again, the comma is liable to mislead the reader into perceiving a vocative.

This is a vocative comma, Biochemist - in the vocative case, you may or may not remember from Latin, one is addressing someone personally. Hence in the Latin translation of the Psalms, the Lord is addressed as "Domine", rather than "Dominus", "Domine" being the vocative case of the noun "Dominus".

Incidentally, a few years ago, a Scottish friend of mine called Morag was telling me that there was a fashion in Scotland for spelling her name "Mhorag" as parents thought this was a more authentic Gaelic spelling. It is a Gaelic spelling, but of the vocative case of the name. What's more, because of the way cases work in Gaelic, it's pronounced "Vorag".

Not as crazy as you'd think. the purpose of the letter H is not to represent a speech sound but give the abstract information that the M-sound has 'mutated' for some grammatical reason or other.

It isn't Gaelic spelling conventions I find crazy, it's the thought of giving one's child a name in the vocative.

After some interesting googling — some it using Gaelic as the preferred search language — I came to believe that Mhoraig is the regular spelling, and that many Gaelic speakers pronounce it with an initial V-sound.

The image search results for Mhoraig are girls faces, and while the results for Moraig are a beach in Spain.

Googling Mhairi is more productive. There's widespread agreement that in Gaelic Mhàiri (pronounced with a V) is a vocative form and that the nominative is Màiri (pronounced with an M).

I failed to find a spelling for the nominative of Mhoraig, but finally twigged that you were talking about Mhorag I don't know either these are further grammatical variants or two distinct names. From then on it was easier.

I identified (via websites for BBC News in Gaelic and the Harris Voluntary Service) a lady whose name is spelled Mòrag Rothach.

I don't know how Ms Rothach chooses to be
1. addressed
2. referred to

But I did get a — hopelessly muddled — picture for Mhàiri/Màiri. It seems clear that many son-Gaelic-speakers use the Mhairi spelling with no sense that it's vocative, still less that's pronounced with a V-sound. On the other hand, a credible number of female posters claim a spelling Mhairi and a pronunciation of something like ma-ree or marry.

The MP Mhairi Black favours a pronunciation like marry. But this is not as conclusive as it looks. Scottish accents of English like hers do not distinguish between PALM vowels and TRAP vowels.

The Wikipedia entry for Mhairi Black has a note on all this. It compares the name Hamish, which originated as a vocative — and therefore mutated — form of Seumas.

One of the posts I read claims that no Gaelic-speaker would enter a vocative form on a birth certificate.

David Crystal illustrates that this practice may depend on the length of the adverbial. His example:

QUOTE
Quickly John entered the room.
...
When the adverbial is short, there's no grammatical or semantic reason to include a comma. The sentence means the same whether we insert a mark or not:

Quickly, John entered the room.
...
UNQUOTE

Actually, this choice isn't restricted to 'introductory element before the subject'. Similarly:

John quickly entered the room.
John, quickly, entered the room

John entered the room quickly.
John entered the room, quickly.

Here(,) too(,) the grammar and syntax are the same but:

QUOTE
The rhythmic effect is very different, though. So the option is open to any author who imagines these words spoken with a particular pronunciation and who want to reproduce this effect in writing. Anyone with a penchant for heavy punctuation (often for the pragmatic reason that it has been hammered into them at school) [my emphasis(,) Diane] will opt for commas regardless of sentence length or composition. Anyone with a penchant for light pronunciation (often for the equally pragmatic reason that they want their writing to look as uncluttered as possible) will opt for their omission. And there are all kinds of intermediate position. This is the main domain where 'taste' operates.
UNQUOTE

Two of my own example choices

1. Here(,) too(,) the grammar and the syntax are the same but:

• Your introductory element before the subject principle calls for a comma after Here.
• Another grammatical principle — seperation of included element — calls for commas before and after too.

BUT Don't you find the punctuation

Here, too, the grammar and the syntax are the same but:

rather cluttered?

Personally, my 'taste' would be to use two commas if at least one of those two elements is appreciably longer than a single word. Which is not the case here. [sentence break as a pause-marking device]

2. my emphasis(,) Diane

To my surprise, I found I prefer a comma here, although my feeling is for the country in Happy birthday, Lynne.

I think the difference (for me) is that in my emphasis, Diane it's a change of address. Up to then I was addressing you and any reader who chances along. With this aside I narrowed the address to you personally.

THAT PESKY SPELLCHECKER!!

For

my feeling is for the country

read

my feeling is for the contrary

David Crystal's point about length may operate here. I'd be much more inclined to use commas in

I implore you, tell me if this is a vocative.
Could you also, I implore you, say whether I have missed a comma in this sentence?

I would call that

'correct' grammar

As someone who used to teach foreign learners, I do have a notion of correct grammar. It's what instinctively seems correct to native speakers — more narrowly to native speakers of the dialect that the students perceive as their target.

There's also a sense in which very young children haven't learned correct grammar. This means that they sometimes use an idiosyncratic grammar of their own invention rather than the grammar of the adults around them.

In this day and age, I don't think the variation is nearly as great as that between food tastes. Typically, speech communities vary most by pronunciation, to a much lesser extent by vocabulary, and least of all by grammar.

Variation in grammar has practically become the definition of a dialect as opposed to an accent.

The civilised thing is to label variant forms as correct in another dialect. if we must be negative, let's say non-standard.

— more narrowly to native speakers of the dialect that the students perceive as their target.

On second thoughts, I'd put a comma after more narrowly.

To me, Annabel, the punctuation clearly implies three girls.

The alternative would demand an odd context in which the reader was expected to know exactly who Heather Adams was, but not the identity of the Head Prefect.

To express a two-girl pairing, I would write:

Their number included the Head Prefect, Imogen Fellows, and a girl called Heather Adams

The way to remove any possibility of confusion is not to re-punctuate, but to rephrase:

Their number included the Head Prefect, together with Imogen Fellows and Heather Adams

This brings us back to your earlier raising of the Oxford comma, Annabel.

A frequent defence of the serial comma centres on a slightly different construction. Imagine a different universe with a different history in which there were two Head Prefects. The choice now is between

1 Their number included the Head Prefects, Imogen Fellows and Heather Adams
2. Their number included the Head Prefects, Imogen Fellows, and Heather Adams

The comma-less version [1] implies two girls. The Oxford comma-ed version [2] lists four girls.

There's an amusing — no doubt apocryphal — account of the book dedication

This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God

The website where I found this used to carry cartoon illustrations of

1 We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.
2 We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.

They still cite an example given in the Chicago Manual of Style

She took a photograph of her parents, the president, and the vice president

So, in certain contexts the serial (Oxford) comma serves to distinguish apposition from listing. Sadly, your example is not one of those conditions:- Imogen Fellows + COMMA could be
EITHER in apposition to the Head Prefect
OR the penultimate item in a list of girls

This brings me back to Lynne's point about the centrality of intonation.

The function of intonation in adding expression to speech is pretty obvious. Less widely considered is the way we use it to make packages of information. One way (I think the most important way) is to signal

• Bear this piece of information in mind
↗
The signal is a rising tone in pronouncing the most important word.

• This is the information I've been building up to
↘
The signal is a falling tone on the most important word.

So what your writer really meant was

the Head ↗PRE-fect
Imogen ↗FELL-ows
and Heather ↘A-dams (three girls)

What you thought she could have meant was

the Head ↗PRE-fect Imogen↘FELL-ows
and Heather ↘A-dams (two girls)

[Different speakers may use somewhat different intonation, but I believe these are more or less the general patterns.]

This is where the comma fails to clarify things.

• In the first version (the three-girl version with Oxford comma) it corresponds to a ↘FALL in the preceding piece of information (Imogen Fellows)

• In the second version (the two-girl version with apposition) it corresponds to a ↗RISE in the preceding piece of information (Imogen Fellows)

The page with Oxford comma examples is here
This JFK and Stalin cartoons are no longer there, but I did copy them here in a discussion elsewhere of the Oxford comma.

I've certainly seen some silly examples where the Oxford comma was needed to clarify one's meaning. I think someone on Facebook found a collection of them somewhere. Certainly it helps, but doesn't always clarify!

David

Although the strippers etc. makes for an amusing cartoon, it's hard to imagine a context where they would get top billing like that. "Stalin, JFK and the strippers" seems most likely (even assuming JFK was well enough known to be identified by his initials whilst Stalin still lived).

Also, "a girl called Heather Adams" seems too remote. She could be well-known to the school (say, as a talented musician or hockey player?). In such a case, "... Heather Adams and the Head Prefect, Imogen Fellows" might be clearest, even if it perhaps seems to diminish the role of Head Prefect slightly.

She could be well-known to the school (say, as a talented musician or hockey player?).

Then (for the two-girl scenario) I might write:

Their number included the Head Prefect, Imogen Fellows, and also Heather Adams.

I wouldn't object to reading this sentence without the first comma:

Their number included the Head Prefect Imogen Fellows, and also Heather Adams.

I wouldn't object too much if it had neither comma:

Their number included the Head Prefect Imogen Fellows and also Heather Adams.

The only version I'd object to is the one with the first comma only:

Their number included the Head Prefect, Imogen Fellows and also Heather Adams.

"Their number included the Head Prefect Imogen Fellows, and also Heather Adams."

I think in this version, it would probably be simply "...Head Prefect, Imogen Fellows,.." rather than "... the Head Prefect, Imogen Fellows [etc]"

"...Head Prefect, Imogen Fellows,.." rather than "... the Head Prefect, Imogen Fellows

1. sounds Amercan to me

2. omits the possibly relevant inform,atom that this school at that time had only one Head Prefect

Nothing with "head prefect" or indeed the name 'Imogen" can be said to sound American. ;)

The absence of the sounds alien to me. It feels new-fangled, and my instinct was to assign to Time-style journalism.