“Which” and “That”: The Comma Tells You Which One
One introduces information you can remove; the other introduces information the sentence needs. The comma is not decoration — it changes the meaning.
Nathan Cole
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Affect and Effect: One Trick Covers Ninety Percent of Cases
Affect is usually the verb, effect is usually the noun, and the exceptions are rare enough to learn individually.
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Capital Letters: The Rules Beyond the Obvious
Everyone knows sentences and names. The trouble is job titles, seasons, directions, and the compulsion to capitalise anything that feels important.
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The Ellipsis: Three Dots, Two Meanings, One Common Error
It marks something left out, or it marks a sentence trailing away. It does not mean “and so on”, and it is not a general-purpose pause.
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The Exclamation Mark Has One Left in the Chamber
It works by being rare. Use two on a page and neither means anything, which is why professional writing has quietly abandoned it.
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The Comma Splice, and the Writers Who Use It on Purpose
Joining two sentences with a comma is the most common punctuation error in English. It is also a deliberate device, and telling the two apart is the whole skill.
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Commas, Dashes or Brackets: Choosing How Loudly to Interrupt
The same aside can be whispered, spoken or announced. Three pairs of marks, three volumes, and most writers only ever use one.
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The Colon Introduces, and That Is All It Does
One job, one test. If the words before it do not form a complete sentence, the colon is in the wrong place.
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Quotation Marks: Where the Full Stop Goes
American and British English disagree, and the American rule was invented for the convenience of typesetters rather than for logic.
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The Apostrophe Rules That Actually Cause Trouble
Nobody struggles with the dog’s bone. The trouble is plurals, names ending in s, and the one case where the apostrophe should not be there at all.
