When you reach the end of a sentence, you need a period, question mark, or exclamation point. Phrases or subordinate clauses standing alone are missing a subject or a verb or are stated in such a way ...

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 ...

While in a master’s program in English, Mary Norris started reading The New Yorker and realized that academe was not for her. She jumped off the academic hamster wheel and entered an alt-ac career ...

Use a comma to separate two independent clauses when they are joined by one of seven coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so). We were out of ice cream, so I went to the store. Use ...

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 ...

We often focus on choosing the right words when we write—but how often do we think about punctuation? These small symbols—dots, commas, dashes, and more—do more than decorate our sentences. They guide ...

In school, I was taught about conjunctions (e.g. or and and) and the role they play in sentence structure – they are linking words. They do what they say on the tin: con-(i.e. with) and -junction (i.e ...