PORTLAND, Maine — It all came down to a missing comma, and not just any one. And it's reignited a longstanding debate over whether the punctuation is necessary. A federal appeals court decided last ...

One of my students once told me that when she writes something she always puts a comma wherever she thinks someone should take a breath. She defended this by saying this is what they do in a musical ...

Sept. 24 is National Punctuation Day, a time to think about all those lowly, little dots, lines, and squiggles that adorn the written word. One of the websites promoting the occasion announces, ...

Now that the end of August and beginning of the school year loom, English teachers everywhere are girding their loins and lacing their corsets, readying themselves for the noble challenge of making ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. Much ink has been spilled recently about how the lack of a comma could cost a local dairy millions of dollars in overtime pay ...

Punctuation basics are easy. A period ends a sentence. A comma represents a pause. A quotation mark indicates a quotation. An apostrophe shows possession. Most people get that. But the finer points — ...

There's a well-worn joke that if you call a copy editor anal-retentive, he'll look that up to see if it's hyphenated. It is, I am, and it's my job. Many people can give dignified one-word answers to ...