Punctuation

A single hyphen should never be substituted for a dash. The hyphen's purpose is to connect. The purpose of a dash is to separate. In days of yore when ...

9 March 2015 In citations to published works, parentheses are used to set off "publication data." When citing a magazine or journal article ...

30 September 2014 American English and British English differ in many niggling ways—some of which we addressed in our posting "International Quotation Differences," last 23 March. Those differences are even more pronounced when we consider ...

31 August 2014 What does a period say to you when you see one? By common agreement in the language world, a period usually means: Stop. The end. Finis. When we're writing, it means ...

8 June 2014 We do love our exclamation points. They are so expressive. They can show delight or frustration. They show surprise, or shock, or incredulity. We can make our feelings even more obvious by using ...

16 February 2013 ,(...). Okay, this is a venial sin, but there's still no reason to commit it. When creating a citation, why would anyone put a comma in front of an open parentheses? . . .