Grammar! Vocatives, my dear Watson. It's elementary. · 4:12am Dec 14th, 2013
It's that time of the year, folks!
This, and more great existential comedy can be found here.
The time of the year when Comrade actually makes a blog post.
Now, my dear reader, you might know that I'm an editor. As such I deal with a number of writers of various levels of proficiency. Beyond even that, though, I'm an observant and critical reader at all times. I get to see a lot of errors, and I'm here to cover the one I see most often. Vocatives.
Vocative is a fancy grammatical term for an addressed person's name, or a substitute thereof. Now, that might confuse you too, and I wouldn't blame you. Allow me to simplify. A vocative is the name, or a substitute of the name, of the thing being addressed. For instance, take the first sentence of this blog post.
It's that time of the year, folks!
"Folks", in that sentence, is a vocative. I, in this blog post, am addressing you directly, and thus when I refer to you, that is a vocative.
Vocatives are always considered parenthetical information.
I'll go into more detail in the upcoming comma rules post. Suffice to say that whenever you refer to the person you or the character are talking to you surround it on both sides with commas.
Example sentences with vocatives in bold:
Pinkie, what are you doing? Run!
It's alright, Twilight.
I don't know, Twilight, Princess Celestia is a little busy getting ready for the Summer Sun Celebration.
Oh my stars, darling, whatever happened to your coiffure?
An observant reader may have noticed a few facets of this rule. First off, as stated above and shown in the last example, a vocative can be a substitution for a person, pony, or thing being addressed. This includes each time Rarity calls anypony "darling" or "dear", as well as Applejack's use of "sugarcube". The first example shows a vocative in the beginning of a sentence, the second shows a vocative at the end, and the third and fourth both show vocatives in the middle of sentences. As you can see, they take commas before and after them.
Do not make the mistake of conflating commas and pauses. They are correlated, nothing more. Commas exist to split up and organize complex sentences, and to eliminate confusion. It just so happens that natural speech tends to often pause around clauses—the vital heart of any complete sentence. I'll have more to say about that when I go over the myriad comma rules and exceptions.
As ever, feel free to yell at me in the comments. If you're confused, you're probably not alone in that, and eliminating confusion is the entire purpose behind these blog posts!
Cheers,
-Comrade
[Edit: The size tag broke. I cannot seem to fix it. Oh well.]
I knew about that name thing, just not the substitution. Thanks, Mr. Sparkle!
Yay, grammar!
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Quoth the Comrade, "punctuate more."
An excellent post. This is one that I still find myself getting confused about occasionally, having to occasionally refer back to my own blog post about commas (one of my three blog posts ever). Having the label "vocative" attached to this should help me remember the rule. Brings back memories of Latin class. Ah, Latin class. I learnt more about English grammar in that one semester than in 12 years of English instruction...
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I personally learned my English grammar in French class, so I can sympathize there.
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Is that an ellipsis I hear rapping at my document door?
An accursed punctuation tapping—tapping at my document door?
Go away and meander nevermore!
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No, you're doing it right.
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Huzzah!
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You are certainly welcome, Mr. Armalite.
I think I like provocatives better...
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Link added to the Helpful Tips on my user page. Keep spreading the grammar gospel!
This is what you've been working on for the last two weeks!?
Anyways, I guess I have to do an update now. Thanks a lot, Comrade.
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Don't tell anyone, but actually I've been working on a one-shot for a group you may have actually started. Hopefully I manage to finish it. Hopefully it won't suck too badly. Hopefully I can remain hopeful. (These things may or may not be unlikely)
Commas save lives!
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Always remember.
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That is one violent panda