Quotation marks in American English.

I get questions about the proper use of quotation marks all the time. Here are a couple of “for sure” uses. Quotation marks are always placed outside periods or commas. There are no exceptions. Examples: “I thought I’d make sure that you know...

When to use commas.

Obviously, commas are a whole issue unto themselves, but there are certain uses of a comma that are “for sure” uses. Here’s one. One of the uses of a comma is to add what’s called “parenthetical information” to a sentence. This is...

What every author must do!

The need to carefully review all changes. Even the most experienced editors need to look over their edited content before publishing: too often, corrections beget more mistakes. Here’s a great example. At the beginning of the month I was looking around my...