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Facebook had a couple of interesting questions/examples on "so." SO I thought it would be good to take a look at them. This is my answer to the questions about the word "so" in the FB sentence belo...

Deciding to use a period versus a semicolon before "Is that correct?" and expecting your reader to distinguish that they mean something different is an exercise in extreme subtlety. This distinctio...

A recent FB answer to why the first kind of tag clauses take a comma and why there cannot be a comma before the word "right" by itself. "Didn't you' and "has he" echo the words of the question. Th...

This is an email question from yesterday. ...…Okay. Now, you told us, Ms. Ryan -- right? -- at one point you got up you left the room and you went to the bathroom. Is that right? Amid all the o...

When the word so means "therefore," it starts a new sentence and takes a semicolon or period in front of it and no single comma after it because it is only one syllable. ...We left early; so I miss...

Sometimes an adverb gets pulled out to the beginning of a sentence to form a "bridge" to the sentence before it. It becomes a linking word for the two sentences and shows a relationship between the...

These eight expressions are often used when something is being renamed or reiterated: i.e., that is, e.g., for example, to wit, namely, for instance, in other words The punctuation depends upon w...

...I arrived on Saturday; he arrived on Sunday. ...He resigned in 2010; she resigned in 2011. ...The first train leaves at 5:00 A.M.; the last train leaves at 10:00 P.M. The Rule: When two sentenc...

So we had a discussion over on FB about "so" -- again! As you all know, I want us to punctuate according to the grammar that is going on in the sentence. I believe with my heart and soul that punc...