An Episcopal priest in Toledo worries that her sermons are cluttered with dashes. This works just fine when she’s preaching, but when the same text appears on her church’s website, it looks like a messy tangle of words and punctuation...
Has the age of email led to an outbreak of exclamation marks? Do women use them more than men? Also, is there a word for the odd feeling when you listen to a radio personality for years, then discover that they look nothing like your mental picture...
Are serial commas always necessary? An English teacher says she was surprised to learn that she and her husband, who’s also an English teacher, are giving their students conflicting advice.
Martha shares what F. Scott Fitzgerald and Elmore Leonard had to say about exclamation marks. Short version: Neither is a fan. This is part of a complete episode.
Some folks use the old-fashioned exclamation “Good night, nurse!” as a handy substitute for a cussword. But where’d it come from? Grant explains how this phrase became popular in the early 20th century. This is part of a complete...
This week’s language headlines include the publication of new slang dictionary, and an entire book devoted to that tiny piece of punctuation, the period, and a tip-off about audio recordings of famous authors whose voices would otherwise be...