Trivial Pursuits by Ramesh PonnuruClinton’s record.

The signal flag was raised for me up front, in “Acknowledgements,” where you wrote, “My brother (Judge) James, and sisters Patricia Bozell, Jane Smith, and Priscilla Buckley read it, as also my wife Pat …” Without putting a comma before your wife’s name, thereby setting it off with commas, you make of the name a restrictive (essential) modifier, telling the educated reader that you have more than one wife: my wife Pat, as opposed to, say, my wife Gertrude. On the other hand, you, or your editor, handle the problem correctly in other places, e.g., on p. 126, where you refer to “my nephew Michael.” Here Michael is meant to be restrictive of the meaning because you have more than one nephew. But the damage has been done, so by the time literate and careful readers get to p. 127 and read, “My friend and theological consultant Fr. Kevin Fitzpatrick,” they don’t know whether Fr. Fitzpatrick is your only combination friend and theological consultant or, if the punctuation is taken literally, simply one of two or more.

Ironically, in one important respect you seem aware of the problem I’m discussing; otherwise you wouldn’t give your name as William F. Buckley Jr., dropping the usual, yet incorrect, comma before Jr., which is, after all, a restrictive modifier.

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The signal flag was raised for me up front, in “Acknowledgements,” where you wrote, “My brother (Judge) James, and sisters Patricia Bozell, Jane Smith, and Priscilla Buckley read it, as also my wife Pat …” Without putting a comma before your wife’s name, thereby setting it off with commas, you make of the name a restrictive (essential) modifier, telling the educated reader that you have more than one wife: my wife Pat, as opposed to, say, my wife Gertrude. On the other hand, you, or your editor, handle the problem correctly in other places, e.g., on p. 126, where you refer to “my nephew Michael.” Here Michael is meant to be restrictive of the meaning because you have more than one nephew. But the damage has been done, so by the time literate and careful readers get to p. 127 and read, “My friend and theological consultant Fr. Kevin Fitzpatrick,” they don’t know whether Fr. Fitzpatrick is your only combination friend and theological consultant or, if the punctuation is taken literally, simply one of two or more.

Ironically, in one important respect you seem aware of the problem I’m discussing; otherwise you wouldn’t give your name as William F. Buckley Jr., dropping the usual, yet incorrect, comma before Jr., which is, after all, a restrictive modifier.