One of my students once told me that when she writes something she always puts a comma wherever she thinks someone should take a breath. She defended this by saying this is what they do in a musical ...

There's a well-worn joke that if you call a copy editor anal-retentive, he'll look that up to see if it's hyphenated. It is, I am, and it's my job. Many people can give dignified one-word answers to ...

Contrary to popular belief, commas don't just signify pauses in a sentence. In fact, precise rules govern when to use this punctuation mark. When followed, they lay the groundwork for clear written ...

There’s no denying that commas are helpful little flecks of punctuation. They allow us to separate written clauses and do good work when especially numerous or complicated groups of things exist in a ...

You may not have noticed, but your world just got less hyphenated. There are fewer commas, too. That’s because changes to the country’s two most influential style books lean lighter on those ...

Sept. 24 is National Punctuation Day, a time to think about all those lowly, little dots, lines, and squiggles that adorn the written word. One of the websites promoting the occasion announces, ...

When you are writing, inverted commas or speech marks go before and after direct speech, surrounding what was said. Inverted commas make it clear when someone is speaking by sitting high up above the ...

Punctuation marks aren't just resigned to the symbols on your keyboard. There are plenty more - like the exclamation comma - that never made it into type but nonetheless exist. The exclamation comma ...

A LAW in Maine excluded from overtime pay “the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of” certain products. But is the end of that ...

In order to make your writing clear, you need to use commas. As well as using them to separate out key information, or divide up different clauses, commas can also completely change the meaning of a ...