National Punctuation Day Today, September 24, is National Punctuation Day. I’ve written about this before, but last year’s offering was fairly broad-based. This year, I’m going to focus on an area of fiction writing that comes quite easily to some, but for many, is a labyrinth of false starts, dead ends, and forbidding alleyways. What I’m…

If you write much at all, you are probably aware that you have a “favorite” punctuation mark. (By favorite, I don’t necessarily mean “favorite.” I mean favorite in the sense that you may overuse, or even abuse, it.) For some, it’s the ellipsis; for others, the semicolon. (See what I did there?) Some people thrive…

For some reason, discussion of comma splices is on the upswing lately. I’ve run across it at least three times in recent weeks; most recently, at Copyediting’s Fiddly Rules Podcast #12.1 Because it’s unlikely you visit the same websites (or subscribe to the same blogs) as I do, I thought I’d give a quick lesson…

How about some mad props for the alliterative title? Hopefully, it caught your attention and prompted you to read more. So without further ado…. First, let’s be sure we’re all on the same page with respect to what pronouns are. They are words we substitute for nouns, generally to avoid repeating the nouns each time…