Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <word-order>
Title: Is it correct English to write "John he is my husband," or, "Mary she went to the store?"
Question: Is it correct English to write “John he is my husband,” or, “Mary she went to the store?”  I hear this construction  frequently from TV and Radio Journalists. Is there a name for this construction?

Answers:
sents: text: This construction is common in speech, and in writing which emulates speech.
text: The initial noun phrase acts as a discourse marker to announce a shift of focus to a new or resumed topic; it will usually be emphasized with stress, pitch, and prosody—often a falling pitch similar to 'comma intonation' or rising pitch similar to 'question intonation'.
text: In writing it should be followed by some sort of disjunctive point, such as a comma, dash, question mark or colon.
text: Most of them are my brothers, but John, he's my husband.
text: The construction is perfectly grammatical, but it is rarely used in formal writing, which lacks the accompanying vocal resources.
text: Formal writing has other methods for achieving the same marking: Most of them are my brothers; John, however , is my husband.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/32/StoneyB on hiatus
score: 45
sents: text: As the sentences stand, the pronouns are normally redundant however, there are some circumstances where you would use it with some modifications in punctuation.
text: The first is in poetic usage where the extra pronoun is used either as a matter of form (this construction is common in folk music) or to preserve metre, e.g:
text: Mary
text: she went to the store For to meet with the man she adored
text: And she watched by the hour
text: While he measured out flour And loitered around by the door Fol a diddle de roll, etc.
text: Another common construction is in response to a question.
text: For example: Q: Who is this John you keep mentioning?
text: A: John?
text: He's my husband.
text: So overall it is not how native English speakers would usually construct a sentence in casual conversation or writing but
text: neither is it wrong nor particularly inelegant.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/32210/Chris Johns
score: 23
sents: text: Yes, but you are punctuating the sentence improperly.
text: To record this kind of phrase in English, we use the em-dash to set the appositive apart from the rest of the sentence.
text: This gives: John— he's my husband— [rest of sentence].
text: Mary— she went to the store— [rest of sentence].
text: We use the em-dash to separate the appositive here, as opposed to the more typical comma, because the appositive phrase is an independent clause.
text: You could reword the sentences as follows to make the comma fit in.
text: John, my husband, [rest of sentence].
text: Mary, who went to the store, [rest of sentence].
text: That said, both formats are grammatically correct and indeed common in spoken English.
text: The emdash is often represented in written English in keyboard-recorded media via the digraph '--', rather than the more traditional character '—'
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/18605/Please stop being evil
score: 7
sents: text: The construction is called "left-dislocation topicalization".
text: Here's a paper 1 about the phenomenon, which defines the term in the introduction:
text: In this paper, I will investigate the information-structural properties of two English structures which utilize word-order variation for such purposes.
text: (1a) and (1b) provide examples for the constructions.
text: (1) a. Tom, I like.
text: b. Tom, I like him.
text: The common name in the literature for the configuration in (1a) is "Topicalization" (abbreviated as TOP henceforth), while (1b) is most commonly called "Left-Dislocation" (abbreviated as LD).
text: [1]
text: On English Topicalization and Left-Dislocation from an Information-Structural Perspective, by Péter Szűcs
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/30611/Charlie
score: 3
sents: text: This is common in informal English.
text: You add extra information about the person you have just mentioned.
text: As StoneyB marked in his answer such extra information can be " emphasized with stress, pitch, and prosody ": John, he's my husband, has just gone to the shop.
text: Henry, oh, he's working in the garage.
text: Oh, come on, that George of yours, he isn't a nice person.
text: Depending on what punctuation mark is placed the meaning is different.
text: Mary?
text: She went to the store.
text: John!
text: You naughty kid!
text: Get here immediately!
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/44134/SovereignSun
score: 3

Summary of the answers:
This can be used with the correct punctuation. Em-dashes are used as follows: "John— he's my husband— [rest of sentence]". Alternatively, sentences can be rewritten with commas, as in: "Mary, who went to the store, [rest of sentence]." Both formats are grammatically correct and common in spoken English.
You're correct, but you're punctuating the sentence incorrectly.