Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. The little word “and,” we probably all know, is a conjunction. It connects things: “She is tall and thin” means she is ...

In the first part of the series on “Understanding the conventions of academic writing”, I discussed these two common error patterns: i) Missing comma after ...

brendan-c on flickr John ate a slice of pepperoni pizza, and drank a bottle of beer. If that sentence doesn't make you involuntarily scowl, then you do not have a proper understanding of commas. Yet ...

Feelings about the semicolon run strong. Its proper use is a hallmark of literacy. Traditionally, the semicolon has three uses: it can replace a comma in a series that includes interior commas, such ...

Letters represent sounds. Words are built from letters. A group of words makes a phrase. Add a subject and verb, and you have a clause. If that clause expresses a complete thought, we call it a ...

A comma splice is the use of a comma, instead of a coordinating conjunction or a semicolon, between the two independent clauses of a compound sentence. If the comma is left out, a second grammatical ...