What’s the deal with the Oxford Comma? When do I use a semicolon? Is there ever a reason to use a dash? We’ve taken a look at some of the most confusing punctuation topics in order to help you make sense of them. Read below for your guide to all …
Modifiers – such as adjectives, adverbs, and descriptive phrases – should usually be next to the words that they describe. Especially when modifiers are more than one word long, people sometimes place them incorrectly. This can cause unintended meanings and even genuine confusion. Here’s how to get them out of …
You may be aware of the sometimes heated controversy over whether to use the well-known punctuation mark, the Oxford comma. However, the Oxford comma – used to separate the penultimate item in a series from and or, or – is not the only punctuation mark to draw ire. Here are …
Before the Vikings dramatically changed English, using whom was a perfectly acceptable English. However, now that grammatical case has almost entirely disappeared from the language, using whom is a strange-sounding holdover that many people don’t quite know how to handle. The general rule is that whom is an object pronoun while …
If you’re trying to win over your audience in any form of writing, you need to be as precise and convincing as possible. Fortunately, the English language has a huge range of words that convey meaning and elicit a strong response from the reader. But many people pack their dictionary …
What is the singular they? You may have learned in English classes that pronouns need to match the nouns they refer to. So, for instance, you use she to refer to an individual girl or woman, he to refer to an individual boy or man, and it to refer to …
Is it possible to have an invented language? From Star Trek and Avatar you probably know that the answer is yes. However, invented languages are not just for the movies. The most successful real-life constructed language, with one to two million speakers around the world today, annual international conferences, and …
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’re probably aware that using proper English is governed by rules and restrictions that are largely unconscious within the minds of native speakers. You probably realize that these rules do not completely overlap with the rules of “proper English”. Which are …
Chances are you give little thought to the slash mark (/), but as it turns out, this little piece of punctuation has an interesting history. Origins of the Slash Mark The slash was invented, according to reporter Keith Houston, by a twelfth-century Italian scholar named Buoncampagno da Signa. He intended …
A misplaced modifier could cause readers to misunderstand your blog post, and a poorly-punctuated résumé could lose you a potential job interview, so it’s important to think about the relationship between what you write and what you mean, especially the grammar and wording. That said, minor linguistic errors or ambiguities …
