Interrupters can be thought of as floating in a sentence because they can move about within the sentence (some more, some less) or be dropped from it altogether without making it mean something vastly different. To signify that a word or word group is a floater, we set it apart with our voices as a separate phrase, and this isolation is reproduced on paper by means of commas. The most common floating element in speech is the name of the person we are talking to. When addressing people, we make statements about them by using the pronoun "you," but we use their actual names simply to get their attention. The names are seldom part of the statements (or questions) themselves. Thus, in addressing John, we would be speaking humorously if we asked,

     "And how is John today?"

The normal form of this question would be

     "And how are you today?"

We could ask about John's mother by using her name or a noun phrase referring to her,

     "And how is Sarah today?" or "And how is your mother today?"

If we added the name of the person being addressed, we would set it apart:

     "And how is Sarah today, John?" or perhaps, "And John, how is your mother today?"

Where we put John's name in the sentence might convey subtle shades of concern, but it would not affect the basic meaning of the sentence and would not even have to be present at all. This is what is signified by the commas, dashes, or parentheses that set such words apart. In this exercise, limitations of the HTML code force us to use parentheses exclusively.

Instructions: Drag and drop the scrambled words and phrases at the very foot of the screen into the most normal word order you can manage. Avoid awkward patterns even if they do make sense, like "Would you scratch, Sally, my back?" After checking your response, read the other correct answer(s).