Just a short doozy for today. Commas are tricky little critters - they don't go where you think they should, and they do go where you see no damn reason for them sometimes. But, there are some hard and fast rules about them, and the following is one of them:

Anytime you (or your characters) are addressing someone by name, the name must be set off by a comma or commas.

"Come on, Spike. Let's go."
"I love you, Slayer, but I'm not going to take that treatment any longer."
"Dawn, where are you?"
"Sorry, Peaches, the Slayer is with me."
"Shut up, Fangface."

I think that covers it - the comma comes before and/or after the name to set it off from rest of the sentence. The rule also applies when it is a nickname or a "pet" name. whelp, bit, pet, luv, Slayer - all need to be set off with commas if the person they are referring to is being addressed by your character.

"I see the whelp is joining us." (no comma)
"Hello, luv." (comma)
"I see you are joining us, Whelp." (comma)


- and I've added an upper case W as Spike is treating it as a name. Just as I usually capitalize Niblet or Bit when he is addressing Dawn. I don't normally do that for "pet" or "luv".

The concensus on RRU, after all our English professors had chimed in, is that endearments are never capitalized, but a nickname may be if it is used often enough to constitute an actual name and not just a not-so-endearment.  Makes sense?

note: I've already covered comma use with speech tags, so I'm not going into that in this section.