confusing

[ninafe]

Dear Teachers and friends,

Help me please with the following. The quotations are from www.grammardoctor.com (tips for May 2004).
Obviously there’s something wrong with either me or commas.

In the sentence "Randy's brother, Russ, is a professional researcher," the absence of commas before and after the appositive, "Russ," means that Randy has only one brother. In other words, it's clear who's being discussed; the name is just extra information.

I thought quite differently: the absence of commas means that Randy has also other brother(s), as in from the same page:

If the sentence had been written "Her brother Russ is a professional researcher," the sentence indicates that the woman had at least two brothers, so the appositive is needed to identify which one is the researcher.

Don’t these two statements contradict each other?

Thanks in advance.

[MrPedantic]

Hello Ninafe

I agree that the passage is confusing.

1. Randy's brother, Russ, is a professional researcher.
— The presence of the commas suggests that Randy has only one brother: "Russ" renames "brother".

2. Randy's brother Russ is a professional researcher.
— Here, we do not know how many brothers Randy has.

However, native speakers are very erratic in their use of commas. If I found this sentence in a genuine text (as opposed to a passage in an ESL textbook or webpage) I would not rely on the presence or absence of commas to tell me how many brothers Randy had.

All the best,

MrP