Comma placement before and after names
Comma misuse is nothing to take lightly. It can lead to a train wreck like this:
Example: Mark Twain's book, Tom Sawyer, is a delight.
Because of the commas, that sentence states that Twain wrote only one book. In fact, he wrote more than two dozen of them.
Source
Why is this sentence a trainwreck? What is the correct placement of commas to un-train-wreck it?
How about this?
Mark Twain's second book, Tom Sawyer, is a delight.
Solution 1:
The source would seem to suggest that the non-train-wreck version of that sentence would be:
Mark Twain's book Tom Sawyer is a delight.
I.e., simply remove the commas, since the sentence is specifically talking about the delightful nature of Tom Sawyer, among Mark Twain's many books, rather than Mark Twain's one-and-only book, as is implied when commas are used.