Liz in Newport Beach, Calif., 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

When combining two complete sentences with a conjunction ("and," "but," "or," "for," or "yet"), precede the conjunction with a comma. Example: Still, the sun is slowly getting brighter and hotter, and ...

Punctuation is very important in our writing. Without it, writing would just be a mess of letters and words and we wouldn’t be able to breathe when reading! Full stops are needed at the end of most ...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, it seems, is a little obsessive about commas. According to press reports, he’s been sending out directives to staff that they should follow certain strict guidelines.

If you’re looking for a grammatical convention guaranteed to spark an unnecessarily outraged debate, look no further than the Oxford comma [Editor’s note: I don’t know that I’d call it unnecessary].

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 ...