English Toolkit

EXPLANATION Notice that, in the above example, Liam is being spoken to and also notice that the word Liam is not really part of the sentence; the actual sentence is:

Do you know when the film will be released?

We can insert the name of the person being spoken to almost anywhere in the sentence, but because it is not part of the sentence, we indicate this using a comma or commas to separate the name from the sentence. We could say:

• 'Liam, do you know when the film will be released?'
• 'Do you know, Liam, when the film will be released?'
• 'Do you know when the film will be released, Liam?'

When someone is addressed directly in this way, the grammatical term used for the name is the nominative of address (from the Latin nomen, meaning name). We use commas to separate the name of the person being spoken to (the nominative of address) from the rest of the sentence.