commas
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The Comma Splice: A Popular Short Story Blunder
At Electric Literature, Kelly Luce reflects on the patterns she noticed after reading for The O. Henry Prize Stories anthology. Her observations range from recent literary magazine innovations to her frustrations with the “inordinate number” of comma splices in first…
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Serial Commas, Subordinate Clauses, and the New Yorker
Mary Norris has a gift for your favorite grammarian in this week’s New Yorker: a detailed account of comma policy from a veteran copyeditor. The magazine is notorious for its meticulous house style (where else do you still see a…
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Word of the Day: Logodaedaly
(n.); cunning in words; skill in adorning speech; the arbitrary or capricious coinage of words; from late Latin and Greek, log (“speech, word”) and daidalos (“skillful, ingeniously formed) Every society we’ve ever known has had poetry, and should the day…
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Is the comma going the way of the Dodo?
Much is being said of the Oxford comma recently and if it is really needed but what if the comma is going the way of the Dodo bird? Is the prominent punctuation mark becoming completely unnecessary? Matthew Malady at Slate…
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Commas, and How Complicated Things Might Really Be
When properly used, commas can be used to keep discourse clear, to bring statements together, and to suffuse language with detail. In “The Comma From Which My Heart Hangs,” Benjamin Samuel makes the case for using commas correctly, exploring the…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
I think I have the plague. I can’t stop coughing. Everything hurts. Don’t come near me. This is just my way of saying this might be all you get from me today. Carolyn Kellogg writes up the Book Expo in…