In a move that has sent grammar enthusiasts into a frenzy, Harry Styles has announced the title of his highly anticipated fourth solo album – “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.” The follow-up to his 2022 Grammy-winning album “Harry’s House” has already sparked intense scrutiny over the placement of a single, seemingly innocuous comma.
The key question on everyone’s mind: is the comma in the right place? Fans and language experts alike have been dissecting the title, with some arguing that the two sentences should follow the same grammatical structure, while others believe the comma adds a deliberate sense of playfulness and experimentation.
“We’re going through a really experimental period with comma usage,” wrote @poeticdweller, a PhD candidate in English at Duke University, in a post that has garnered nearly 1 million views. The post noted that the comma “turns the second sentence from a parallel imperative sentence to a fragment that vaguely gestures toward the occasional presence of disco.”
However, not everyone is convinced that Styles has committed a grammatical faux pas. Britt Edelen, the author of the viral post, believes that the unconventional punctuation is intentional and adds a sense of “kinetics” to what would otherwise be a “boring” title.
“It’s not a perfect construction by our grammatical standards and that’s fun,” Edelen said. “It fits into a larger scheme of people trying to articulate things via commas that aren’t actually how we use them.”
Ellen Jovin, the author of several books on grammar and the star of the road-trip docu-comedy “Rebel With a Clause,” agrees that the comma may be a deliberate stylistic choice. “When I see ‘disco, comma,’ it’s giving me a little bit of a mental break,” she said, suggesting that the comma could be used to “render the time of speech graphically.”
Jovin also pointed out that the context matters – this is an album title, not a high school English assignment. “This is just creativity, and I think it’s perfect,” she said.
The visual aspect of the title also plays a role, as artists have increasingly experimented with non-standard capitalization and punctuation in recent years. Styles, known for his keen eye for detail, may have simply liked the way the comma looked, especially in a world where music streaming apps proudly display each song’s title with the artist’s preferred styling.
Ultimately, the debate surrounding Styles’ album title serves as a reminder that grammar rules are fluid and can be bent, twisted, and even broken in the name of artistic expression. As Jovin aptly noted, “I think Americans are overly punctilious punctuators. They tend to pay attention to rules and prohibitions a lot.”
