Tumblr crosspost (2 November 2020)

[anghraine]

I’m not sure why it is, but one of the little tics that I’ve noticed in student work/fic/video games/etc is omitting commas around names.

That is, usually when using a name, it’s like: “Isn’t that right, Ana?” or “Zahra, this belongs to you.”

But I’ve seen the commas left out a lot across various media (“Isn’t that right Ana?”). It’s not some terrible wrongdoing or anything; I’m just curious why that usage in particular gets dropped so often and so widely.