The punctuation mark that annoys people the most is, without a doubt, the apostrophe. Whole books have been written lamenting atrocities like “five carrot’s and three kiwi’s” (for the record, that ...

I’ve gotten a lot of emails recently about where to put periods and commas relative to quotation marks. The notes were prompted by a recent column in which I mentioned that, in American English, a ...

Everyone knows that the world’s material resources — food, water, oil — are distributed unequally, but few realize that the same is true for punctuation. Take quotation marks: Some forms of writing, ...

We all know someone who uses air quotes in conversation, and we often mock this person. Comedian Chris Farley did a classic skit on “Saturday Night Live” about a goofy guy who uses air quotes for ...

Punctuation plays a vital role in shaping how writing is understood. From full stops to semicolons, each mark helps guide meaning, structure, and emotion in a sentence. Misuse can lead to confusion, ...