The punctuation rule we’ll discuss in this post is the use of a comma after an introductory element in a sentence. It builds on the immediate previous posts in exploring the confusion around comma use and some basic rules to keep in mind. It is actually a visit to one of my earliest posts, “Do …
The use of commas in compounds, the third in the 3 Fundamental Comma Rules guide, appears as number 13 on the list of “The Top Twenty,” discussed in previous posts. This list of twenty most common errors made by college-age students, also reflects common errors made by writers of any age. In fact, the failure …
As noted in my writingessentials blog and other website writings, the comma is the punctuation mark that, as Little, Brown says. “probably causes more anguish for apprentice writers than any other punctuation mark” (355). Commas are the most frequently misused, or underused, punctuation mark among first-year writers. Indeed, errors with commas represent no less than …
“I love writing. I couldn’t see any other life for me. I love words. The act of writing, in itself, is a pleasure.” – Bill Kennedy Writing buddy Dave Blumkin shared this quote with me recently. I wonder if all of us approach writing with the same joy? I know that I have struggled with writer’s block …
This post builds on the previous post, which focuses on the different types of dashes. I see beginning writers misuse or confuse the uses of ellipses and dashes, particularly the em-dash. Some writers also use a hyphen instead of an em-dash, but this is incorrect. Hyphens have their own special function which was dealt with in …
I was tempted to title this post “distinguishing the dashes” or “dashing through the typography of breaks”—keeping in tempo with themes of December. A recent presentation by an editor caused me to revisit my post on when to use the ellipses or the dash in writing. My focus was on the em dash since its …
The period – punctuation mark of sentences In the post on the use of periods in texting, I noted that the period, or the full stop as it is commonly called in British English, has been around since the early 1600s to signal the termination of a sentence (just as a capital letter signals the …
The title of this post can be read two ways – that it deals with matters or topics about punctuation, or it deals with why punctuation is a matter of concern, or of importance. Most people would include period, commas, semicolons, and question or exclamation marks in this section, relegating parentheses, quotation marks and capitals, …
Continuing the discussion of capitalization trends began in the previous post, “less is more” with capitalization. In 2016, The New York Times announced changes in it capitalization policy. For instance, it switched to lower case for internet (at the same time that the Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal did), although it had changed …
Capitalization is an area of mechanics dealt with several preceding posts, including “How do I know when to capitalize a word?” It is another example of how language and its conventions change, as well as the importance placed in dealing with them. For instance, “unnecessary or missing capitalization” appears as error # 8 in the …