The rule is: the word 'it's' {with apostrophe} stands for 'it is' or 'it has'. If the word does not stand for 'it is' or 'it has' then what you require is 'its'. This is extremely easy to grasp....

In her autobiographical Giving Up the Ghost {2003}, Hilary Mantel reveals: I have always been addicted to something or other, usually something there's no support group for. Semicolons, for instance,...

We read privately, mentally listening to the writer's voice and translating the writer's thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it. Picking up the book in the first...

There is even a rather delightful publication for children called The Punctuation Repair Kit, which takes the line Hey! It's uncool to be stupid! - which is a lie, of course, but you have to admire...

Come inside," it says, "for CD's, VIDEO's, DVD's, and BOOK's.

In Beachcomber's hilarious columns about the Apostropher Royal in The Express, a certain perversely comforting law is often reiterated: the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th...

That's why they came up with the emoticon, too-the emoticon being the greatest {or most desperate, depending how you look at it} advance in punctuation since the question mark in the reign of...

As we shall see, the tractable apostrophe has always done its proper jobs in our language with enthusiasm and elegance, but it has never been taken seriously enough; its talent for adaptability has...

I have been told that the dying words of one famous 20th-century writer were, I should have used fewer semicolons

The rule is: the word it's {with apostrophe} stands for it is or it has. If the word does not stand for it is or it has then what you require is its. This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your...

nothing is straightforward in the world of literary taste.

Some may say that the British are obsessed with class difference and that knowing your apostrophes is a way of belittling the uneducated. To which accusation, I say {mainly}, 'Pah!' How can it be a...

So the particular strengths of the colon are beginning to become clear. A colon is nearly always preceded by a complete sentence, and in its simplest usage it rather theatrically announces what is to...

Writers jealous of their individual style are obliged to wring the utmost effect from a tiny range of marks – which explains why they get so desperate when their choices are challenged {or...

No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked uo on the spot and buried...

pretentious and over-active semicolons have reached epidemic proportions in the world of academe, where they are used to gloss over imprecise thought.

humorous writing, the exclamation mark is the equivalent of canned laughter {F. Scott Fitzgerald – that well-known knockabout gag-man – said it was like laughing at your own jokes}

If colons and semicolons give themselves airs and graces, at least they also confer airs and graces that the language would be lost without.

Joseph Robertson wrote in an essay on punctuation in 1785, The art of punctuation is of infinite consequence in writing; as it contributes to the perspicuity, and consequently to the beauty, of every...

What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world.

I'm sure people did question whether Italian printers were quite the right people to legislate on the meaning of everything; but on the other hand, resistance was obviously useless against a family...

semicolons are dangerously habit-forming. Many writers hooked on semicolons become an embarrassment to their families and friends.

No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes we are often aggressively instructed to "get a life" by people who, interestingly, display...

So what happened to the comma in this process? Well, between the 16th century and the present day, it became a kind of scary grammatical sheepdog. As we shall shortly see, the comma has so many jobs...

While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation....

Cruelty to punctuation is quite unlegislated: you can get away with pulling the legs off semicolons; shrivelling question marks on the garden path under a powerful magnifying glass; you name it.

you know those self-help books that give you permission to love yourself? This one gives you permission to love punctuation.

...by tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self-publishing. Thus people who don't know their apostrophe...

Oh yes, sir. There's no doubt about it, sir.The Punctuation Murderer has struck again.

one might dare to say that while the full stop is the lumpen male of the punctuation world {do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly}, the apostrophe is the frantically...