Sadly, I saw this in an ad, an actual ad, that was paid for and probably a designer was paid and a copywriter too, yet no took a minute to actually proofread the darn thing. Do you see the mistake? In the heart of a young woman, lies a secret that divides a nation. Here’s the answer: The comma doesn’t belong because the two parts of that sentence can’t stand alone. How do I know? Because neither makes sense on its own. Here’s proof: In the heart of a young woman. Lies a secret that divides a nation. Do either of those “sentences”...
(Originally published August 2017) Why do people struggle so with commas? It seems we either tend to over-do it or under-do it, and using commas correctly eludes us. Maybe that’s because the comma is so easy to use and so easy to leave out. It’s just a little bit of punctuation, lacking the hardness or a period after all, right? What harm can it do to guess? Well, in my opinion, it can do plenty of harm if it: Gets in the way of clarity Makes you look dumb Or does both 1 and 2 So let’s talk about an easy way to know whether or not...
I had an attack of acute gastritis a while back, although I didn’t know it at first. I thought I had a severely upset stomach, that’s all, although I was in a lot of pain and sleeping a lot. On the evening of the second day, I finally Googled my symptoms to learn it was acute gastritis. As much as I appreciated finding the information I needed so I could treat the ailment, I was distressed to see this crazy use of commas on a medical website: “There are several different types of acute gastritis. This is due to the fact that the...
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