Punctuation

30 September 2014 American English and British English differ in many niggling ways—some of which we addressed in our posting "International Quotation Differences," last 23 March. Those differences are even more pronounced when we consider ...

31 August 2014 What does a period say to you when you see one? By common agreement in the language world, a period usually means: Stop. The end. Finis. When we're writing, it means ...

4 May 2014 A single hyphen should never be substituted for a dash. The hyphen's purpose is to connect. The purpose of a dash is to separate. In days of yore when ...

16 February 2013 ,(...). Okay, this is a venial sin, but there's still no reason to commit it. When creating a citation, why would anyone put a comma in front of an open parentheses? . . .