MK: Your example, "In her greatest short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper,'
Charlotte Perkins..." makes the title an appositive. Since there is only one
"greatest" short story, the appositive does NOT get commas around it, but
Johanna is right about the initial adverbial phrase, of course. H Hoover

>From: "Kischner, Michael" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: punctuation query
>Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 17:00:26 -0700
>
>It seems that we are talking about restrictive and non-restrictive, but
>you can avoid it in this case by telling them that, if the writer has
>written only one story (or poem or whatever), you would set it off with
>commas.  If the writer has written more than one, then one does not use
>commas.  It gets a little more complicated when you start adding
>modifiers:  "In her greatest short story, 'The Yellow Wallpaper,"
>Charlotte. . . " -- because she has written only one "greatest" short
>story.  Or "In her story about kitchen remodels, 'The Yellow
>Wallpaper,". . .  (sorry, Ive taught the story but just now totally
>forget what it was about!).
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jo Rubba [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 4:40 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: punctuation query
>
>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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