A Rip-Snortin’ Knock-Down-Drag-Out Million Dollar Comma Fight
Objects do not have to be large to be expensive. Paul Ogden just alerted me to an article in the NY Times on a contractual dispute that centers around a single comma that is worth a million dollars...
View ArticleOn line, On-line, Online
Today’s Good Word, predator, contains the following line: “. . . adults who try to seduce our children on line.” Paul Ogden, one of the daily Good Word editors, commented that the spelling online 1.7...
View ArticleHappy Punctuation Day!
I am back from my foray into France, the land where everyone loves pain and a drink of water makes you say, “Oh!” It is a land where champs are flat and ordinary though everyone’s beau is good-looking....
View ArticleThe Most Important Period in History
Much is written about important words and phrases that have shaped the course of human history. So far as I know, the issue of important punctuation marks has been largely ignored. To me, the most...
View ArticlePeriods, Commas and Quotations
Bob Meinig raised a question yesterday that comes up now and then. It concerns the placement of quotation marks vis-a-vis periods and commas in our Good Words and on the website. At yourDictionary.com...
View ArticleDots or No Dots?
D.D.D. Schulek-Miller raised a question today of which, I would think, many readers of this blog are unaware. Doug wrote: “I grew up thinking, gosh only knows from where, probably a good grammar...
View ArticleIntonation and Meaning
I took phonetics with the late Kenneth Pike at the University of Michigan. Prior to Chomsky, he was the leading linguist in the US because he had the only complete theory of linguistics, which he...
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