Perhaps your high school English teacher told you about style guides, but maybe you didn’t even come across them until college when your English Composition instructor informed you, “You must use MLA style or fail this course.”

Read More

Q: Why are the rules of punctuation so strict? When is it appropriate to us a comma? When should one use a comma as opposed to a semicolon, or an em-dash, or parentheses? What is the difference between a semicolon and an em-dash, anyway? What is an em-dash, and how did it happen?

A: The Language Ninja orders you to calm down. Although you seem slightly desperate to have all the answers immediately, they will have to be addressed in a series of posts. Try not to allow your head to explode.

Read More

Editing is the calm after the storm. It’s when the survivors pick through the wreckage, making a semblance of a life again. A little dramatic, perhaps, but it’s apropos. Writing is the storm that messes everything up, throwing words, punctuation, and grammar here and there…and editing cleans it all up.

Read More

Quick, before the Feds kick down my door—let me tell you a story.

This is a case of alleged corruption, unproven fraud, and suspected malfeasance…all made possible by a small grammatical ambiguity.

What if I told you that a missing comma nearly let me slip away with half a million dollars of ill-gotten taxpayer money? Well, “slip away” might be the wrong way to put it—the questionable actions can be justified as perfectly legal…from a certain point of view.

Where to begin?

Read More

Branding Experts: No High Fructose Corn Syrup ’til You Right Your Creepy Courses!

With October 31^st around the corner, it’s the perfect time to discuss a subject that’s near and dear to my heart: What happened to the apostrophe that used to live in Hallowe’en? And how long has it been missing?

For years, I thought I’d never find that charming throwback to Ye Olde Worlde punctuation, but then I’ll be darned if it didn’t turn up the other day gratuitously tacked on to the title of the Lands’ End catalog. At least, I think that’s the same one. Or maybe the Lands’ End bonus apostrophe is the rogue migrant that’s missing from Maurices clothing chain store, and has nothing to do with Hallowe’en at all. 

Read More

If you have any hipster sensibilities, you may be familiar with New York-based rock band Vampire Weekend and one of its most widely known hits: “Oxford Comma.” The very NSFW lyrics, from which I pulled the title of this post, don’t actually take a side in the classic grammatical debate of “to serial comma or not to serial comma?” However, it’s definitely a catchy tune. Though it may reveal the band’s decidedly ambivalent stance on the Oxford comma question, the song also serves as evidence of this debate’s pervasiveness. Who ever thought a grammar question would become part of American pop culture?

Read More