Congratulations are in order. Congratulations to you. I'm more than a little late extending them. But it has only recently come to my attention that you've been walking a linguistic tightrope for your ...

Commas don't just signify pauses in a sentence — precise rules govern when to use this punctuation mark. Commas are needed before coordinating conjunctions, after dependent clauses (when they precede ...

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 ...

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 ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. The little word “and,” we probably all know, is a conjunction. It connects things: “She is tall and thin” means she is ...

Full stops and commas are punctuation marks. A full stop ends a sentence. A comma shows a pause, breaks up a list or separates parts of a sentence. Full stops are easy. They always go at the end of a ...

Place a comma before these words only if what comes after could stand alone as a sentence (i.e., is an independent clause): Smith is passionate about making music, and he is encouraging of his band ...

We often focus on choosing the right words when we write—but how often do we think about punctuation? These small symbols—dots, commas, dashes, and more—do more than decorate our sentences. They guide ...