While we all slip up from time to time, there are some basic punctuation mistakes you should never make in formal writing. For example, don't confuse "it's" and "its," don't use an apostrophe to ...

Are you manic about misplaced commas? Apoplectic over rogue apostrophes? Distressed by the disappearing question mark? You don’t have to be an outspoken member of the punctuation police to know the ...

Apostrophes are equal opportunity humiliators. As I wrote recently, apostrophes incriminate less-word-savvy types by popping up in plurals like “We play bridge with the Smith’s” and “He had two ...

Your words are your most powerful weapons, and yet it’s easy to undermine yourself in written communication by violating some very simple rules of punctuation. Before I dive deeper into this, a ...

Emmy J. Favilla is Global Copy Chief and creator of the BuzzFeed Style Guide and author of A World Without “Whom”: The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age. If a friend texts me with a ...

An independent clause close independent clauseAn independent clause is a group of words that work by themselves as a sentence. is a group of words that work by themselves as a sentence. A simple ...

Punctuation is a concept borrowed from communication theory and applied to family systems and other arenas of conflict. Bateson provided the example of a couple in which one partner nags and the other ...