Pity the poor comma. Its fate is either to be misplaced or, worse, never used at all. Rare and wondrous is its proper placement.
Consider Friday, when one of those intrusive little bottom-of-screen titles on a cable-news network offered this quotation from a debate: Man Up Harry Reid.
That’s gotta hurt.
It’s a scatalogically unfortunate mistake, and worlds — and one comma — away from the proper usage: Man Up, Harry Reid.
(Note: This is a grammar entry. No political comments will be approved, so take your hate — on both sides — elsewhere.)
It’s not just some minion at a cable network, however. Nobody knows how to use the direct-address comma anymore. But to recap: If the statement or exhortation is directly addressed at some named party, use a comma to separate that name from the rest of the sentence. Thus: Fight fiercely, Harvard. Papa, don’t preach. Help me, Rhonda. Have you no shame, sir?
I know this is a losing battle, but the Harry Reid example shows why the comma exists in the first place. It’s a question of making yourself clear.
By the way, here’s an entertaining entry about Woody Allen’s bad punctuation in movie titles. It’s not a perfect correlation, but in general: The better the Woody Allen movie, the better the punctuation.
There’s a lesson in there.