despite her/your busy schedule

You are correct, Tanguatlay. The speaker is talking about the Principal to the audience, and therefore uses the third person. This is the standard way of formally introducing someone to an audience.

"First of all, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the Principal of St Joseph School, for coming to our school to grace the occasion despite her extremely busy schedule. She [or name e.g. Mrs. Jones] is well known for her notable contribution to education in our community, and it is a great privilege to have her here today."

I would just add that those schools [mostly religious] which are named after saints are usually (but not absolutely invariably) named with the possessive, e.g. "St Joseph's School" so it is something to be careful of.

The comma after "School" is also unnecessary, though not totally incorrect.

Thanks, Contrex and Shapeless.

I agree.


Unfortunately I think it is incorrect.

I have seen commas used in similar contexts, especially when the text is understood to be spoken aloud (as Tanguatlay's could conceivably be) and the comma serves to indicate where a brief pause would be inserted. Whether that makes it strictly correct or incorrect is up for grabs, I suppose.

I have seen these too. I think a dash would be better here. I do not agree with the advice, often given, to insert a comma where a pause would occur if the text were read aloud. For one thing, different readers might pause in different places.



A comma has a job to do, but indicating to those reading aloud where to pause for breath is not part of that job. Therefore my vote falls for the 'incorrect' verdict.

I think that's the point. If the reader is not the author of the sentence, then the comma serves to inform the reader of where the author intended the pause to go. This is not to say that the reader must agree with the author's preferred places to pause, but it isn't hard to conceive of contexts in which one would want to know what parts of the sentence the author was trying to emphasize.



I more or less agree, but for what it's worth, Fowler's Modern English Usage disagrees.