Sex. Now that I have your attention, I’d like to discuss the fact that this sentence you’re reading is not necessarily a run-on sentence because run-on sentences are not simply sentences that run on ...
Time once again for a visit with our friend the comma. Or should that be our friend, the comma? Normal people don’t really care about the proper deployment of commas, but there are those of us who are ...
As the keeper of the comma shaker here at The New Yorker, I feel obliged to respond to the characterization of our house style regarding commas, in Ben Yagoda’s recent post for the New York Times blog ...
Attorneys deal with laws for a living. Bureaucrats work with regulations. Restaurateurs contend with heat, spice and the irregularity of natural ingredients. I work with words and, occasionally, ...
What punctuation, if any, would you add to the following sentence? Exiting your host's bathroom after half an hour and saying "Don't worry; I fixed your toilet" is not an example of excellent ...
How do you know whether or not to set something off in commas in a sentence? Are the added words essential (restrictive) or not (nonrestrictive)? that limits the meaning of what it modifies. And it ...
It’s just a comma, my friend complained to me last week while I was editing her essay. I had told her, politely but firmly, that one of her sentences was incorrect without a comma; she did not take it ...