The Grammar Logs
#567

I am creating a birth announcement for a friend. The front cover copy reads as follows:

Let's dance and sing and make good cheer …
My baby brother Karson is here.

My question: Do I have to put a comma before and after "Karson"?

Setting off the name "Karson" with a pair of commas would be correct, as the name is parenthetical (not essential to the meaning of the sentence). However, you might have more than one baby brother, which would make the name essential — and then you would use no commas. Also, it is perfectly legitimate to regard the name, Karson, and the identification of that name, "my baby brother," as one thing — and thus to use no comma. This would be true, for instance, in a sentence like "My wife Marilyn is visiting her aunt in Florida." In short, you don't have to put commas in your sentence. And congratulations!

Authority: The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin. 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill: New York. 2001. Used with the consent of Glencoe/McGraw-Hill.

I wonder if the first letter of an adjective of location needs to be capitalized. For example, Eastern religions, Western thinking etc.? I believe when I refer to" the mentality in the West" that west needs to be capitalized. Is this correct? I appreciate the help!

Yes, when a directional word is used to name an identifiable area of the world, we capitalize it. You might live in the southern United States, but you live in the South. And you would capitalize Western thinking, Eastern religions, etc.

I was wondering what is wrong with the following sentence:

"Somewhere between Canada and the United States is where I was at."

I was told that the sentence should end with "are," but I don't know why. It doesn't make sense to me. It seems that this statement has a different set of problems. "Are" is a present form of "be" and is a verb. Is there some rule pertaining to this fact that "are" needs to be at the end of this sentence.

I can't imagine how "are" would help that sentence. Some people might object to the superfluous "at" at the end of the sentence. Others (like myself) would suggest something like "I was somewhere between Canada and the United States," although I don't know how that is geographically or physically possible (perhaps if you're at sea?).

Is a comma necessary before the phrase "as well as"?

The simple answer to your question is No, it isn't always necessary. I wish it were as easy to say exactly when the comma is necessary, and when it isn't! Here are two sentences from Burchfield:

• The background as well as other parts is dotted or stippled.
• This sheep, as well as the long-tailed Demar sheep and the small black-headed Persian, is very popular

These examples suggest that the punctuation of the phrase introduced by "as well as" must be determined by the rhythms of the sentence, by the relative intrusiveness of the phrase thus introduced.

Authority: The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996. Used with the permission of Oxford University Press.

In a research document, should 1/3 be spelled out?

It depends, somewhat, on what you mean by "research document." If the document contains a lot of measurement and numbers of statistical significance (well, first of all, you'd probably be using decimals), you might use numbers, but in normal text, stand-alone fractions are written out as words unless the fraction is being used for the purposes of computation or it's part of a complex phrase, as in "multipy by 2/5" or "5/32 inch."

Authority: The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin. 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill: New York. 2001. Used with the consent of Glencoe/McGraw-Hill.

It was certainly correct grammar when it was written for the King James Version (very early 17th century). Beginning in the sixteenth century, English began to adopt different auxiliaries for the perfect senses or aspects of verbs. Thus "has risen" would be a more "modern" version of the same thing, and that's what you'll find in the New American Standard Version of the Bible. See The Origin and History of the English Language and do a search for "risen."

What is the proper sentence structure in the following example:

These issuess are significant since neither Alice nor Jane or their respective parents had been in contact with each other.

The switch from "nor" to "or" (after Jane's name) confuses the issue. Are "Jane" and "their respective parents" meant to be coupled in a way that "Alice" and "their respective parents" are not. The sentence probably means to treat all three entities the same: Alice, Jane, and the sets of parents. To show this we can use "nor" again: "Neither Alice nor Jane nor their respective parents…" The second "nor" serves to emphatically frame the three elements you are thus holding together. And since more than two people are involved in potential contact, I would change the "each other" to "one another."

From The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Styleby Bryan Garner. Copyright 1995 by Bryan A. Garner. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., www.oup-usa.org, and used with the gracious consent of Oxford University Press.

In the following sentence, please let me know if the use of in's and out's is correct

If you have any questions, please feel free to call (but more importantly Fred with respect to the in's and out's of the policies).

At some time in the not too distant past, using the apostrophe in "ins and outs" would have been acceptable, but recent dictionaries and usage manuals do not recommend apostrophes in this phrase. (It's not very clear how Fred's name is working in this sentence. If you're addressing Fred, put a comma on either side of his name; if you're talking about Fred, try the one comma after his name.)

Authority: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Electronic Edition, Version 1.5. 1996. Used with permission.

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