Ah, the comma. There is, perhaps, no other piece of punctuation so widely misused. We get it — the comma is a seductive mistress. As an editor, I inevitably see writers get swept away by the charming comma far too often. A common side effect of the comma craze is to sprinkle them around like they’re confetti. Perhaps you, too, are bothered by unnecessary commas. Maybe you’re a concerned writer who fears you commit random acts of comma. Worry not, dear reader, for I have the solution. I Read more [...]

  Today’s installment of The Red Pen is about the appositive, a grammatical construction that you probably never knew existed — but if you do, you saw what I just did there and can probably stop reading.       Appositives and appositive phrases are nouns or nominal phrases set beside another noun to rename or identify it. They are used to provide either additional (non-essential) information or essential identifying information. The appositive, a Read more [...]