Help!  This is driving me nuts.

My students don't know when to put a comma before the title of a book,
story, poem, etc. I am having trouble figuring out the rule. I'm  hoping
it's not the standard restrictive - non-restrictive principle, because
half of them don't get that. It seems to have to do with prior mention,
but I can't formulate it. Here are some typical contexts:

Charlotte Perkins' short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" portrays a woman
going mad.
In his poem "In Hardwood Groves", Robert Frost exploits the metaphor
PEOPLE ARE PLANTS ...

I know that commas around the story/poem title would be wrong; in the
second context, the comma after the title is required to set off the
initial adverbial phrase.

Most commonly, my students use the comma(s) when they should not. Is
there a straighforward explanation for this? Please don't tell me I have
to explain noun complementation or restrictive/non-restrictive
appositives ... please ...

***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~  E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
***************************************************

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