by Nancy Tuten | Jul 25, 2019
With the possible exception of the Oxford/Harvard/serial comma, very few usage issues elicit responses as passionate as the topic of punctuating with quotation marks. American vs. British Conventions If I were in charge of writing the rules about the use of quotation...
by Nancy Tuten | Jul 11, 2019
In another article, we address the problem that arises when people try to use apostrophes to make words (especially names) plural. Here we are dealing with words—both singular and plural—that actually do need to be possessive and thus need apostrophes: Where do they...
by Nancy Tuten | Jun 14, 2019
This article focuses on abbreviations for two Latin phrases. We often see i.e. and e.g. used incorrectly (and illogically), so it’s easy to get them mixed up. (Elsewhere on this site, we have articles on many confusing word pairs, such as effect and affect, lay...
by Nancy Tuten | May 30, 2019
When two words come together to create a single new idea that expresses meaning different from that of either of the individual words, the result is a compound word. Sometimes compound words include a hyphen (not to be confused with em dashes or en dashes, which we...
by Nancy Tuten | Jun 9, 2016
Style manuals do not agree on the issue of when writers should spell out numbers and when they should use numerals. And even a single style manual will point out that the guidelines change according to the type of number and the context in which it is being used....
