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Just the basic rules for the dash. It is the third one that many people don't always remember. There are three basic reasons to use a dash:1. broken sentence structure (This is where the interrupt...

There is a grammar principle here: Use each other with two; use one another with three or more. Remember that, when making a word possessive, everything in front of the apostrophe has to be a wor...

This particular phrase, turn into, is an idiom which means "to become." ...When he drinks, he turns into a monster. So with the word turn, unless the meaning is "to become," in to has to be two w...

The English rule is that the year is surrounded by commas when it follows the date and that the state is surrounded by commas when it follows the city. ...happened on May 4, 2013, near Tulsa. ...l...

When the question is "Was that A.M. or P.M.?" the problem with the way the answer looks is solved if you cap both letters. The dictionary gives you an option for caps or lowercase. Choosing caps al...

I will be in Northern CA on Saturday, September 7, for a punctuation seminar and on Friday, September 6, for a CSR review class -- Golden State College in Pleasanton. Check out details on my websit...

September is a busy month for seminars. I will be in Northern CA for a "live" seminar on September 7 and a student seminar on the 6th and am doing four online seminars the next two weeks. Then off ...

The term "lead-in words" is used to describe the words that introduce quotes. Traditionally they are ...I said... ...did he ask... ...she replied... ...did you state... Some of the "modern" innov...

Well, after the convention and some other issues, I am back. Someone recently asked why a sentence inside of a sentence has to have dashes and not just commas. The answer is that, just as two sent...