As the holiday season approaches each year and people gear up to send holiday greeting cards, we need a reminder about how to make last names plural. (Hint: Doing so does NOT involve an apostrophe.) If we stop to think about it, most of us will remember that...
In the past we’ve discussed the confusion surrounding plurals and possessives (should we write “Happy holidays from the Smith’s” or “the Smiths”?). Making that distinction is arguably one of the trickier issues in English usage. Another is confusion about commonly...
The hyphen, the em dash, and the en dash are all horizontal marks of varying lengths. Each functions differently from the others. Below we define each mark, explain when to use them, and provide instructions for typing them on both PCs and Macs. (View our new...
An ellipsis consists of either three or four periods, or dots. A single dot is called an ellipsis point. The definition is pretty straightforward, but using ellipses can be tricky. Writers use ellipses for various reasons. An ellipsis can indicate the omission of...
Elsewhere on this site we have addressed two other issues involving capitalization: knowing when to capitalize people’s positions and job titles and recognizing when a noun is common, not proper, and therefore should not be capitalized. This article focuses on knowing...
Hardly a week goes by that we are not asked a question about vertical lists (often referred to as bulleted lists): When are bullets more appropriate than numbers or letters in a vertical list? What do we mean when we say that the items in a list must be parallel? How...
