SOME British readers might wonder why a London-based publication uses double inverted commas like "these". And some American readers may wonder why commas and full stops (er, periods) sometimes appear ...

Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. There’s no denying that commas are helpful little flecks of punctuation. They allow us to separate ...

To Oxford comma, or not to Oxford comma? That is the question which has been taxing the internet over the past 24 hours, after it emerged – erroneously, as it later turned out – that the Oxford comma ...

Lederer has long been one of America's most popular experts on language and grammar, but here he seems to be taking his cue from Lynn Truss in focusing on the ins and outs of commas, semi-colons and ...

The Oxford comma, so-called because the Oxford University Press style guidelines require it, is the comma before the conjunction at the end of a list. If your preferred style is to omit the second ...

For at least two centuries, it has been standard practice in the United States to place commas and periods inside of quotation marks. This rule still holds for professionally edited prose: what you’ll ...

Experienced writers know this elegant punctuation mark is the best way to join closely related clauses; really, it’s the only way. “It’s too subtle,” author Jenny Hammer says. “People would rather ...