In a recent informal Twitter survey of which punctuation marks one would marry, kill, or you-know-what, we found a strong reaction in favor of keeping the em-dash alive. Others preferred the ...

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I have said that I stand by the Oxford Comma. When the great debates about the Oxford Comma rage, I rush to its defense. I very much believe the Oxford Comma is ...

I was shocked to hear my son never heard of the interrobang. Especially since his little boy uses it all the time. Sort of. The interrobang is a punctuation mark. And since my 4-year-old grandson does ...

Today is a special holiday! Happy National Punctuation Day. Punctuation can be both the great love and the occasional bane of a writer's existence, and it's not strange that a love affair may crop up ...

It’s hard to believe the year we have had. Even harder that a punctuation mark could help explain it. But when you consider the history of the interrobang—a largely forgotten symbol that marries both ...

A moment's hesitation... Yes, a full stop here – but shouldn’t there be a comma there? Or would a hyphen be better? Punctuation can be a nuisance; it is often simply neglected. Wrong! The most recent ...

Notice anything wrong with those quotation marks, shown during NBC's broadcast of the Winter Olympics? They're wrong in a really bizarre way, so wrong that they offend columnist John Kelly. (John ...

New symbols are being designed; old marks are serving new purposes. And collectives are actively working to preserve the correct use of the dots and squiggles.

You see your friend walking across Sproul Plaza. You say: HEYYY Sup. How’s it going? Nothing. You stayed up all night studying for your midterm. You went to every study group and only fell asleep in ...

Forget black rhinos and the Amazon rainforest: there’s something arguably just as precious joining the endangered species list, only this time, it’s a grammatical rather than biological extinction ...

In the undergraduate history of English course I am teaching this term, I request/require that the students teach me two new slang words every day before I begin class. I learn some great words this ...

Semicolon use by Americans has dropped by 51% since the early 2000s to once every 378 words; younger Americans say they still ...