Commas around non-parenthetical name like "The famous playwright, William Shakespeare, was born…"?

I commonly see commas used like: "The famous playwright, William Shakespeare, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon."

It bothers me, but I'm curious to hear explanations of why this is done, and if it can be considered correct English. Is there any style manual that approves?

I would accept "The famous playwright William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon" or "William Shakespeare, the famous playwright, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon".

However, when phrased like "The famous playwright, William Shakespeare, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon", I read the name as parenthetical. But that sentence doesn't make a lot of sense with the name removed, as "the famous playwright" looks definite, but is undefined.

It suppose it could make sense in a context where the subject is mentioned previously, something like "Once upon a time, there was a well-known dramatist. The famous playwright, William Shakespeare, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon." In that case, the name really is parenthetical. But I've seen commas used this way without such a context, and often, I believe, in the very first sentence of a text.

Solution 1:

This is just a rhetorical figure called an appositive:

appositive a noun or noun substitute placed next to (in apposition to) another noun to be described or defined by the appositive.

There is nothing wrong with it, and it is certainly grammatical.

Solution 2:

Okay, after a night's sleep, I realized that thanks to @Robusto's answer and the comments on it, the question can more generally be posed as "Are commas allowed around a restrictive appositive?"

Searching Google for something like "restrictive apposition|appositive commas", I see several results that state that restrictive appositives should not have commas.

E.g. The University of Wisconsin's Writer's Handbook which states

Use commas to set off non-restrictive modifiers. Do not use commas to set off restrictive modifiers.

For a more authoritative source, the Chicago Manual of Style doesn't seem publicly available online, but I found Q&As that strongly suggest that it takes the same view: this and this.

I did not find any style guide stating they're required or allowed, but I did not try hard, and I am of course biased.

Solution 3:

No. The punctuation in the sentence "The playwright, William Shakespeare, was born" to my view is incorrect because "William Shakespeare" is a restrictive appositive. The commas suggest the "William Shakespeare" is ancillary information and that it could be deleted without changing the meaning of the sentence. This is not the case. Compare with "William Shakespeare, the playwright, was born."

Solution 4:

I seem to be able to see two things here: an anastrophe, and an appositive:.

The appositive can be seen by the noun (William Shakespeare) surrounded by the two commas. The appositive is recognized by these commas.

An anastrophe is a figure of speech in which a language's natural word order has been reversed. This is seen by

"The famous playrwright, William Shakespeare, ... "

instead of

"William Shakespeare, the famous playwright,...

In either cases, they are both grammatically correct.

Solution 5:

I believe using commas in that sense is wrong, simply because a comma is a pause and there's no reason to pause before and after the name. The commas clutter the sentence and make it harder to read.

Apologies if that veers too close to personal opinion, but simplicity and directness are good rules of thumb.