It’s hard to believe the year we have had. Even harder that a punctuation mark could help explain it. But when you consider the history of the interrobang—a largely forgotten symbol that marries both ...

Forget black rhinos and the Amazon rainforest: there’s something arguably just as precious joining the endangered species list, only this time, it’s a grammatical rather than biological extinction ...

We take them for granted, but they are the backbone of how we write. Where would we be if you couldn’t emphasize your shock by ending your sentence with “?!” or using “;” to signal a pause? The scene ...

Today is a special holiday! Happy National Punctuation Day. Punctuation can be both the great love and the occasional bane of a writer's existence, and it's not strange that a love affair may crop up ...

In a recent informal Twitter survey of which punctuation marks one would marry, kill, or you-know-what, we found a strong reaction in favor of keeping the em-dash alive. Others preferred the ...

The em dash, one of the most versatile punctuation marks in English, has become widely associated with AI-generated text ...

These are exciting times for the exclamation point. As punctuation symbols go, the exclamation has always been a love-it-or-leave-it kind of mark. Some folks use it often, perhaps too often, for ...

When writing, sometimes one may use a punctuation mark incorrectly. The incorrect use usually happens when lists or a separation of items are involved. Most writers know how to use a “period,” a ...

Statistical analysis of classic literature has shown that the way punctuation breaks up text obeys certain universal mathematical relationships. James Joyce's tome "Finnegans Wake," however, famously ...

MAYBE YOU REMEMBER the calico cat who used to slip in at night and use this typewriter and sometimes I would put in the paper what she wrote. A lot of the customers hated that cat and I don't use her ...

A poet I know, reluctant to define what poetry can or can’t be, once suggested (somewhat facetiously) that a bag of dirt could be a poem if the poet deemed it so — calling to mind Marcel Duchamp’s ...