Note: We’ve written a new version of this post with six extra tips. Read the new version. Ever finish a draft of an essay, report, or proposal only to find out that you’re hundreds (or even thousands) of words over
Can’t figure out why commas belong in certain places in sentences but not others? You’re not alone. In English, we use commas in many different ways, so their presence in (or absence from) a sentence may seem arbitrary. However, commas
When you’re writing a sentence that already contains the word “and,” it can be tempting to use “as well as” instead of another “and.” You probably learned at some point in school or at work that you should avoid using
Not every sentence that sounds like a question ends with a question mark. Sentences that do end with question marks are called direct questions — they are sentences that we could ask someone. For example, “Lisa, where are the cookies?”
For those of us who write in English on a regular basis, using periods is usually a pretty standard affair. We know that, in general, we need to place a period at the end of a sentence. In some cases,