Are You Appositive about This?
Appositives are grammatical elements that may be restrictive or nonrestrictive in a sentence. Not positive you know what an appositive…
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Learn When to Be Restrictive
Do you find the rules regarding comma usage restrictive? Or just confusing? Some comma confusion comes from understanding restrictive and…
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Using Hyphens to Avoid Confusion
If I called you a short story editor, would I be remarking on your height? I would be, if I…
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To Apostrophe or Not—That Is the Question
Sometimes punctuation is a matter of context. Attributive vs. possessive nouns are a case in point. Is the second Sunday…
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Joint Ownership
Let’s talk a bit about joint possession and the proper way to express this. Possession can get a bit tricky, and…
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Any Way You Splice It
You might know it as a run-on sentence, a fused sentence, or a comma splice. When two independent clauses—sentences that…
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Don’t Abuse the Dot-Dot-Dots
Writers often succumb to dot abuse. Well, I’ve heard some people call ellipses “dots.” I’m not talking about the candy…
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Scare Quotes Are Not All That Scary
There’s a time and place for every punctuation mark. Using any of them excessively or incorrectly is, well, just plain…
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Semicolons: Commonly Misused Bits of Punctuation
The semicolon is the most commonly misused punctuation mark. Bryan Garner (A Dictionary of Modern American Usage) calls the semicolon…
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