When I was in my upper 30s, working with the Palm Beach Post, I came across a piece written by the copy chief that had the conjunction however in the middle of a sentence, with a comma on either side. I still remember how startled I was. I’d never encountered this punctuation error before, and couldn’t believe that the man in charge of ensuring the correctness of grammar, spelling, punctuation – all of the mechanics of writing – would write like that. Couldn’t he see that he

Preventive Gerontologist, Dr. Arnold Bretsky, recommends this … That’s the beginning of a sentence from a newspaper advertorial urging people to use a certain brain supplement. Perhaps the person who wrote it ought to practice what he or she preaches. Or take a course in English grammar. Of course, to err is human. However, to err over and over, which happens in this piece, is ignorance. It may be bliss, but it ain’t happenstance. What’s wrong with that sentence fragment? Let

Give me an and, the grammar cheerleader in me wants to shout. disjointed You’d think people had an allergy to and. These days, this conjunction is used too sparingly in compound sentences, where it is required to join nouns or adjectives if the sentence is not to seem – well, disjointed. “And” then what? Stinginess with and results in sentences such as this one in an advertorial for a hair-loss therapy: “PRP is safe, convenient, and has no downtime associated with it.” Sure,

Do you ever read a newspaper story, an advertisement, an essay or some other piece of literature and feel as though you’re being jerked out of your seat? Not by the content, but the punctuation. Omission of commas in critical places can hamper understanding, but unnecessary commas impinge on smooth expository flow. An egregious category of this is a comma separating a person’s title or identifying noun from his or her name. Redundant comma syndrome Here is an example from a n

No Commoners Here My all-time favorite cartoon appeared in The New Yorker a few decades ago. A woman in a long formal gown and elbow-length gloves is at a posh party, brandishing one of those long-stemmed cigarette holders common among aristocrats in the day, her face sour with hauteur. Next to her is a tuxedoed gent, hands clasped behind his back, gazing imperiously at nothing. “Tell me,” says the lady, her expression unchanging, “what do you think of the comma?” Comma-kaze