This lavishly researched book shows that dots and dashes are an essential component of style, whether you’re a medieval monk or Donald Trump ...

When reading a classic book, we tend to pay attention to the themes, the characters, and the story. We say the words aloud. We notice everything, in fact, except for one crucial thing: the punctuation ...

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 ...

A moment's hesitation... Yes, a full stop here—but shouldn't there be a comma there? Or would a hyphen be better? Punctuation can be a nuisance; it is often simply neglected. Wrong! The most recent ...

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 ...

Word, word, word, word, word, punctuation mark. This is how we read. Sometimes there are more words, or fewer. Occasionally additional marks—commas, em-dashes—enter the mix. But that’s pretty much how ...

The question mark, said Gertrude Stein, is “positively revolting”. She thought the exclamation mark was “ugly” and “unnecessary” too. Cormac McCarthy shuns the semi-colon and quotation marks. At times ...

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 ...