Happy National Punctuation Day, Internet! To celebrate, we've prepared a guide to the most hated punctuation mark of all: the semicolon. Although you won't need it often, it can add essential clarity ...

Feelings about the semicolon run strong. Its proper use is a hallmark of literacy. and today we're going to talk about the semicolon. It's the hot new piece of punctuation. Everyone is using it. The ...

In the world of the rule followers, the semicolon has two licit functions: to separate items in a series that have internal punctuation, and to splice two independent clauses. In the wider world of ...

Do you like magic? Commas are the magicians of our language. They can transform the meaning of a sentence! My co-workers and I collect jokes about grammar. We have one that says, "Let's eat Grandma" ...

Liz in Newport Beach posed a good question about commas. Consider the following two sentences. “Days are usually great, but, when they aren’t great, they still pass in 24 hours.” “Every word should ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The writer is a science commentator The slow demise of the semicolon is devastating; there is no punctuation ...

Serial commas made headlines a few weeks ago when a court decided that the absence of a serial comma made a law ambiguous. In this space last week, I begged to differ. But I didn’t have enough space ...

In the delightful Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark, Cecelia Watson, a historian and philosopher of science, takes readers through a lively and varied “biography” of the ...

Maria Kari is a freelance writer and journalist currently based in Vancouver, BC. "Who gives a [insert expletive] about an Oxford comma," asked the Vampire Weekend boys in 2008, shocking many an ...

Feelings about the semicolon run strong. Its proper use is a hallmark of literacy. Traditionally, the semicolon has three uses: it can replace a comma in a series that includes interior commas, such ...