Comma Weekend continues:

Commas project truth. You may try to suppress it, but commas will not be denied their connection with the Universal Reality.

Take the following three sentences:

1. My friend Viki has tentacles.

2. My friend, Viki, has tentacles.

3. My friend, Viki has tentacles.

That Viki has tentacles is a given. In case you are wondering, she also has tusks and a distinctively maritime aroma. But what else do we learn from the previous sentences?

The first sentence means what it means: I have a friend named Viki, and she has tentacles. In the second sentence, Viki, set apart by commas, modifies my friend. Therefore, the commas reveal what I might not otherwise choose to: that I have only one friend, her name is Viki, and by the way, she has tentacles. In the third sentence, I am not referring to Viki as a friend, merely reporting that someone named Viki has tentacles. However, the comma reveals that the person I am addressing is my friend. It is a friendly warning about the tentacles, one that might be better heeded had I chosen to employ the immediacy of an exclamation point instead of the matter-of-factness of the period.

Commas matter.