Commas can be a particularly tricky punctuation mark. There are some cases where you know you should use a comma – such as when separating items in a list – but there are other times when you might be unsure whether or not a comma is needed.While there’s some degree of flexibility in how commas...
Understanding “Either … Or” and “Neither … Nor”
If you’re presenting two alternatives, you’ll often use an “either … or” or a “neither … nor” construction. Here’s how those work:You can choose either cereal or toast for your breakfast.My friend’s car is neither green nor brown.Either is used in the affirmative sense,...
5 Wordy Sentences Examples and Corrections
The careful writer always reviews their prose, and one of the qualities they aspire to demonstrate is conciseness, or brevity of expression. Revision of the following wordy sentences, accompanied by commentary about the revision, provides specific examples of the types of verbosities to eliminate.1....
Subject-Verb Agreement: Rules and Examples
One of the rules of language that you almost certainly know, even if you’ve never thought about it consciously, is that subjects and verbs must agree with each other in number.If that sounds a bit complicated or mathematical, here are a couple of very simple examples to show this in action:The child plays at...
Oscar Nominations 2020: The Complete List
Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” a comic-book origin story about Batman’s biggest foe, scored a leading 11 Oscar nominations on Monday, including best picture, best director for Phillips and best actor for Joaquin Phoenix.Martin Scorsese’s mob epic “The Irishman,” Quentin Tarantino’s ode to Los Angeles “Once...
The 14 English Punctuation Marks With Examples
Do you know how to use punctuation marks correctly in English? While some might seem straightforward, you may come across punctuation marks that you’re unsure about … so this post is designed to serve as a handy reference. You’ll find “further reading” suggestions for each punctuation mark, if...
5 Problems with Parenthesis
Parenthesis is the strategy of setting a word, phrase, or clause off from a sentence to interject additional information into that statement. Despite the name, parenthesis can be accomplished with two commas or a pair of dashes as well as with a brace of parentheses. However, several problems can occur...
