One of the difficulties about punctuation is that a lot of it is down to personal preference or “style”. And that isn’t just a recent thing, to be blamed on textspeak and the belief that the world is ...

“People don’t know why they get so upset about language,” David Crystal told me recently, over Skype from his home in Wales. “ ‘Potato’s,’ with an apostrophe ‘S,’ ” he offered, as an example of the ...

This article was originally published on 11/7 and republished on 11/8. When people ask me how to get into games journalism these days, my main piece of advice is “don’t.” I’m really not kidding, as ...

Some people are only just learning about the em dash, or so it seems, as written content faces a new wave of ChatGPT-generated accusations – all thanks to the versatile punctuation mark. Tweets, blogs ...

It’s easy to take punctuation for granted after seeing commas, question marks and periods your whole life, but the reality is, punctuation is quite interesting, and some of the facts about it might ...

Why is punctuation important? From emails to text messages, poetry to novels, punctuation guides readers, creates rhythm and brings clarity to even the most complex ideas. Imagine reading a sentence ...

Commas, semicolons and question marks are so commonplace it seems as if they were always there – but that’s not the case. Keith Houston explains their history. As readers and writers, we’re intimately ...

Recently in this space we talked about how, when two punctuation marks bump up against each other, one can sometimes preclude the other. For example, a phrase that would normally be followed by a ...