Punctuation Marks: Commas and Clauses
There’s a fine art to using commas. Today we’ll look at how commas work with clauses — both dependent clauses and independent clauses. And don’t worry if you’re not sure which clause is which. Everything will be explained. Independent Clauses and Commas An independent clause can stand alone as a sentence: I watch movies. Two…Read More
Homophones: Accept vs. Except
The English language is fraught with sound-alike words that look nothing alike on the page (or screen). These homophones have given many writers headaches as they agonize over word choice while composing poems, articles, essays, and stories. Accept vs. except is one such pair of words. Though not among the most commonly confused homophones, these…Read More
Grammar Rules: Split Infinitives
It’s important that we, as writers, know the tools of our trade. Part of our job is to understand the mechanics of language, which includes grammar rules. Yet many writers find themselves asking… What are split infinitives? It’s a term that grammarians and linguists throw around a lot, yet few people, including writers, seem to…Read More
What’s The Difference Between Dashes and Hyphens?
To the passive reader, it’s a short horizontal line that appears somewhere in a text, usually joining two words together. To a writer, it’s something else entirely, but what? Is it a dash, a hyphen, or a minus sign? More than once, I’ve been pecking away at my keyboard and stopped suddenly when confronted with…Read More
Homophones: They’re, There, and Their
Homophones are words that sound the same when pronounced out loud but have different meanings. Homophones such as they’re, there, and there confuse kids, slip past spell check, and pop up all over the place as typos and misspellings. To make things worse, many homophones have different spellings, which means spell check ignores them, since alternative spellings…Read More
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