Question

Which sentence is punctuated correctly?

Answer 1

On Monday, July 1, Susan Martini, M.D., announced her engagement to Bob Taormina.

A comma between Monday and the date, July 1, is required. The comma after July 1 is needed because On Monday, July 1 is an introductory phrase. Traditional comma rules state that there needs to be a comma between the person's name and his or her title as well as after the title. The first comma shows that the title is not officially part of the person's name (think birth certificate). The second comma shows that the title is connected with the person's name and not a separate part of the sentence. Just a note, more recently it has been acceptable to leave these two commas out. You either have both commas or none. However, for an English assignment on comma rules, the correct answer would be to include the commas.