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 one 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...
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...
This Monday’s Mistake relates to our new Guide to Punctuation, but also to the ever-important rule to choose clarity! Here’s the sentence: “The digital front-end (website, app, store, etc.) and the back-end (like customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resources planning (ERP) and billing systems) need to sync with each other.” Do you see a problem with it? I do: confusion. Technically, the writer used parentheses correctly, but they lost the clarity. The poor reader has to work to get through this forest of...
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