In the first part of the series on “Understanding the conventions of academic writing”, I discussed these two common error patterns: i) Missing comma after ...

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 ...

Attorneys deal with laws for a living. Bureaucrats work with regulations. Restaurateurs contend with heat, spice and the irregularity of natural ingredients. I work with words and, occasionally, ...

THE OXFORD COMMA is a form of punctuation – but it’s become a cause of much debate over its usage. So when should you use it and where? We all use commas when writing lists of things. But the Oxford ...

When combining two complete sentences with a conjunction ("and," "but," "or," "for," or "yet"), precede the conjunction with a comma. Example: Still, the sun is slowly getting brighter and hotter, and ...

Sex. Now that I have your attention, I’d like to discuss the fact that this sentence you’re reading is not necessarily a run-on sentence because run-on sentences are not simply sentences that run on ...

Punctuation is very important in our writing. Without it, writing would just be a mess of letters and words and we wouldn’t be able to breathe when reading! Full stops are needed at the end of most ...

The handsome, articulate, intelligent man wore a bright green midriff peasant blouse. Not really. No intelligent person would do that. But I offer up this sentence not as an example of fashion sense ...

The Romans and the Ancient Greeks didn’t use punctuation at all. They didn’t even have gaps between words. This is called scriptio continua, writing as one continuous string of capital letters, so ...