Adding a comma can change the meaning of a sentence. Let's eat Albert. = We're going to eat Albert. Let's eat, Albert. = We're eating with Albert. In a long sentence, you can use commas to separate ...

Let’s eat Grandma vs. Let’s eat, Grandma.” Classic middle school English teacher vibes. In all seriousness, though, these cornball axioms serve a purpose. Kenyon is a writer’s college by name, and we ...

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 ...

Here’s an interesting question posed to me recently: Which of the following sentences is punctuated correctly? Look for fresh basil at your local grocery store, and, if it isn’t available, tell the ...

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 ...

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 ...

One of the commenters on “Dumb Copy Editing Survives” last week said something that worried me. My topic was the contrast between sentences of the sort seen in [1a] and [1b] (I prefix [1b] with an ...