Early instances of written language were lists. To render ideas as sentences, scribes needed a way to indicate where a reader ...

“People don’t know why they get so upset about language,” David Crystal told me recently, over Skype from his home in Wales. “ ‘Potato’s,’ with an apostrophe ‘S,’ ” he offered, as an example of the ...

It’s easy to take punctuation for granted after seeing commas, question marks and periods your whole life, but the reality is, punctuation is quite interesting, and some of the facts about it might ...

I was a novice editor, he was an experienced writer, and the first article he turned in revealed a virtuosic command of comma placement. He opened with long, slow clauses; picked up speed with shorter ...

Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. The following is the first of three excerpts from Keith Houston’s new book, Shady Characters: The ...

One of the difficulties about punctuation is that a lot of it is down to personal preference or “style”. And that isn’t just a recent thing, to be blamed on textspeak and the belief that the world is ...

A moment's hesitation... Yes, a full stop here—but shouldn't there be a comma there? Or would a hyphen be better? Punctuation can be a nuisance; it is often simply neglected. Wrong! The most recent ...

Punctuation is the homely, workaday cousin to the glamorous word. It works quietly in the background, sweeping up and trying to keep the information flow tidy, while words prance around spilling ...

We’re living in a time where we have more technology than ever for sharing our words, but we still constantly get misunderstood. One cause of this is that we simply don’t use enough punctuation in our ...