Commas help organize your ideas. They show pauses, separate parts of a sentence, and keep things clear for your reader. Here are the most useful rules. 1. Use a comma before and, but, or, so (if both...

Semicolons (;) help connect ideas that are closely related. They are stronger than a comma but less final than a period. Let’s look at how to use them correctly. 1. Use a semicolon to join two relate...

Title Case means you capitalize the important words in a title. It’s the style used in book titles, film titles and headings. What do we capitalize in title case? Capitalize: The first and the la...

An apostrophe (’) is a small punctuation mark that makes a big difference in meaning. We use it to make short forms (don’t, it’s), to show that something belongs to someone, and in some time expressio...

Parentheses (these: ( )) are used to add extra information in a sentence. But where does the punctuation go: inside or outside? Here are the rules. 1. If the parentheses contain a full sentence When...

These three marks may look similar, but each one has its own job in writing. Here is when to use a hyphen, an en dash, or an em dash. Hyphen (-) Use a hyphen to connect two or more words, especially...