Aug 3, 2007 · The rule of putting a period at the end of every thought would be simpler, except that in English, we’re allowed to include more than one thought in the same sentence. These thoughts are …

May 6, 2013 · Therefore, use an en dash to indicate scores for sports or other competitions (for example, “Her team won 6–3” or “They came back from behind to chalk up a 97–92 victory”). Note, …

May 19, 2009 · These two spellings [cannot/can not] are largely interchangeable, but by far the most common is “cannot” and you should probably use it except when you want to be emphatic: “No, you …

Jun 15, 2015 · A reader wants to know how between and in between differ in usage: Please explain the usage of the term “in between.” It’s been many years since I heard anyone say this. I always thought …

May 8, 2012 · Words with the antonymic prefix dis- are easily confused with similar-looking terms starting with mis- or un- that usually have differing connotations or

Sep 9, 2011 · When the first line of each paragraph in the running text is indented, block quotations of a single paragraph, and the first of multiple paragraphs, are not indented, but subsequent ones should …

Nov 20, 2012 · 4. Begging the question: offering as evidence something that needs to be proved is begging the question. Arguing that the car industry in the US is the best in the world, for example, a …

Writers like to sprinkle their work with subordinate clauses because they add variety to sentence structure. A reading diet too heavy with simple sentences or

Jul 3, 2007 · In the post Show, Don’t Tell, I mentioned dialogue as one of the ways you can “show” your reader what’s happening in a scene. Effective dialogue is an essential part of both fiction and …

Jun 7, 2014 · A reader who works with legal transcription has the following question: There seems to be a trend towards having the prefixes and suffixes separate from the modified noun instead of being …