: Listing names with titles Normally when listing a group of people you would simply separate each with a comma. Please send the memo to Jason, Sarah, and Courtney. However if you want

@Shelley992

Posted in: #Formatting #Punctuation #Style

Normally when listing a group of people you would simply separate each with a comma.


Please send the memo to Jason, Sarah, and Courtney.


However if you want to include the title of each person


Jason, Chief Information Officer
Sarah, President
Courtney, Investor


It would end up looking like a list 6 people (or 5).


Please send the memo to Jason, Chief Information Officer, Sarah, President, and Courtney, an investor.


Is there a proper way to do this?

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@Debbie451

@Debbie451

The semicolon properly separates items in a list that themselves contain commas: "Please send the memo to Jason, Chief Information Officer; Sarah, President; and Courtney, an investor." [1, 2]

[1] style.mla.org/serial-commas-and-semicolons/ [2] www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/semicolons_in_lists.htm

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@Dunderdale623

@Dunderdale623

When writing a list like this, you have several options for how you want to style the text.
In business writing, such as an email, you can always format this as a bulleted list:

Please send the email to the following recipients:

Jason, Chief Information Officer

Sarah, President

Courtney, Investor



This has the advantage of being easily scanned, but might be a little cumbersome for just three items. Alternately, you can style the list as a horizontal list, using semicolons to separate out the name/title pairs:

Please send the memo to Jason, Chief Information Officer; Sarah, President; and Courtney, an investor.

However, the horizontal list should be used sparingly, since one with more than two or three items tough to parse.
If it's not important to keep the name/title pairs intact, you could always split the titles out:

Please send the memo to Jason, Sarah, and Courtney. These people have the roles of our Chief Information Officer, our President, and an investor in the company.

In an informal situation where the context is clear, perhaps you don't even need the titles:

Please send the memo to Jason, Sarah, and Courtney.

Note: As always, check if you are to follow any style guides or style sheets. Academic, technical, and scientific writing almost certainly will have these. Larger companies may have corporate style sheets, and even some non-profits. If this is the case, you may already have guidance to follow.

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