One of my students once told me that when she writes something she always puts a comma wherever she thinks someone should take a breath. She defended this by saying this is what they do in a musical ...

Punctuation. It accompanies our written form of language. It helps us to better understand things when we read them. Let's take this phrase as an example. Without punctuation it is a dangerous ...

As the keeper of the comma shaker here at The New Yorker, I feel obliged to respond to the characterization of our house style regarding commas, in Ben Yagoda’s recent post for the New York Times blog ...

A few weeks ago, I mentioned in this space that serial commas, also called Oxford commas, are a matter of style. So either “red, white and blue” or “red, white, and blue” can be correct depending on ...

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 ...

There's a well-worn joke that if you call a copy editor anal-retentive, he'll look that up to see if it's hyphenated. It is, I am, and it's my job. Many people can give dignified one-word answers to ...

Attorneys deal with laws for a living. Bureaucrats work with regulations. Restaurateurs contend with heat, spice and the irregularity of natural ingredients. I work with words and, occasionally, ...