Comma questions keep cropping up online, and will forever, because the simple punctuation mark serves two different functions, which are blurred in usage. Some are necessary grammatically, some ...

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 ...

Now that the end of August and beginning of the school year loom, English teachers everywhere are girding their loins and lacing their corsets, readying themselves for the noble challenge of making ...

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 ...

I am, unapologetically, an over-user of commas. Case in point: I could have written the previous sentence as, "I am an unapologetic over-user of commas," but opted not to. I wished to emphasize just ...

Serial commas made headlines a few weeks ago when a court decided that the absence of a serial comma made a law ambiguous. In this space last week, I begged to differ. But I didn’t have enough space ...

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 ...