Oct 21, 2014 | Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Think of the em dash as the traditional dash and the en dash as the hyphen. With our numerous punctuation marks, you would think that one dash is enough, but we have two little marks that are referred to as dashes, and if you are in the publishing business, there are...
Aug 4, 2014 | Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Steven Pinker, the famous psycholinguist, says the Elements of Style usage manual is valuable but has some “cockamamie advice.” In an essay titled Writing in the 21st Century (http://bit.ly/1xBiAiN. Skip the first six paragraphs), Pinker, now at Harvard, notes that...
Sep 17, 2013 | Punctuation and Grammar
Insert a colon after words that form a complete thought, not after phrases such as for example or as a result. It is common for someone to write, The topics on the meeting agenda include: the annual conference, staff additions, and budget planning. Similarly, you...
Aug 1, 2012 | Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
People are familiar with using a comma before and, but, or so, but however, nevertheless, and furthermore are a different kind of connecting word and can be more problematic. Nearly three dozen words that appear at the start of a sentence and in the middle serve a...
Jan 24, 2012 | Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
People frequently are unsure whether to put a comma before “and,” but how about using a comma before such words as because, when, where, and who? Essential clause – Words that are an integral part of the main thought of a sentence form an essential clause, and...
Oct 10, 2011 | Punctuation and Grammar
It’s acceptable to begin a sentence with because or however, contrary to what many people learned. There is no grammatical principle to support the notion that it’s wrong. Prominent writers have done it for decades, and language historians don’t know where the...