Writamins

Many people suffer from secret feelings of stupidity because they don’t know how to use the semicolon. They imagine that everyone else knows what to do with this sophisticated mark of punctuation—and that they must have been absent or dreaming on the one day of school when the teacher explained it. Since they assume that […]

Writers often struggle over the gnarly question of whether to put a comma before the conjunction and and its fellow conjunctions. And is one of seven coordinating conjunctions which are punctuated similarly. These conjunctions spell out FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. DO Use a Comma Put a comma before and when connecting independent clauses. Remember, an independent clause has a subject and

Apostrophes are scattered like snowflakes across the landscape of today’s writing. People who are not quite sure how to use this little punctuation mark simply drop it in at random intervals. Possessives, plurals, contractions… some get apostrophes and some do not. Within the same document, some words have proper apostrophes and others do not. What

What is missing from these sentences? I will not revise the draft at this point so the final should look the same.If not, we will send the final report by itself and you could send the original to accounting.We would like to purchase the product but we do not have the budget right now. Right!

Can a comma — or the lack of a comma — trigger a lawsuit? Consider: William Johnson writes a will in which he states, “I leave my estate to my children, Paul, Henry, Susan and Sally,” William lives out his years, and when the will is read, the children are confused. Do Susan and Sally