Liz in Newport Beach posed a good question about commas. Consider the following two sentences. “Days are usually great, but, when they aren’t great, they still pass in 24 hours.” “Every word should ...

Time once again for a visit with our friend the comma. Or should that be our friend, the comma? Normal people don’t really care about the proper deployment of commas, but there are those of us who are ...

In order to make your writing clear, you need to use commas. As well as using them to separate out key information, or divide up different clauses, commas can also completely change the meaning of a ...

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 ...

How do you know whether or not to set something off in commas in a sentence? Are the added words essential (restrictive) or not (nonrestrictive)? that limits the meaning of what it modifies. And it ...

When you reach the end of a sentence, you need a period, question mark, or exclamation point. Phrases or subordinate clauses standing alone are missing a subject or a verb or are stated in such a way ...

An Oxford, or serial, comma is the last comma in a list; it goes before the word "and." Technically, it's grammatically optional in American English. However, depending on the list you are writing out ...

The Oxford comma. Not just the title of a Vampire Weekend song, it’s the pesky piece of extraneous grammar that sits before the conjunction in a list. For example, in the phrase “apples, oranges, and ...