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An independent clause and a sentence are the same thing. And the first rule of all punctuation is that a comma goes before a coordinate conjunction that connects independent clauses. The fact that ...

When we say, "Do not put a comma after 'so,'" we are talking about a single separating comma. A pair of commas can go anywhere. There is never a single comma after "so." We have this confusion ofte...

Dear blog people, If you remember a very successful Australian tennis player from the 1970s, Evonne Goolagong, you might remember that she had "walkabouts" -- times when she just wasn't with it, w...

The rules for “so”: When it means “so that” and implies the reason for doing something, it begins a dependent clause which, at the end of the sentence, gets no punctuation. …I sent it to her so I...

There is a question about the blog from earlier in the week: What happens when the spelling is interrupted or picks up midword? It is important to remember that the hyphen goes with the letter tha...

The "rule" for letter-for-letter spelling is that the spelling should look exactly like the word/words when they are written normally -- same punctuation, same capitalization. ...Robert Hendricks,...

When yes and no or any of the words that indicate affirmative or negative are in the middle of a sentence, they are surrounded by commas. ...And, yes, he did accompany us the first time. ...He was...

Don't forget that a parenthetical has to be surrounded by punctuation. When the parenthetical follows the word and, for example, there has to be a pair of commas around the parenthetical. ...And i...

When a noun clause direct object is pulled out to the front of the sentence -- where it does NOT belong -- it takes a comma after it before the subject and verb in the sentence. ...Where she was t...