Commas are tiny, versatile, omnipotent commanders of the punctuation weaponry, helping us mortal editors who wage an everyday Kurukshetra against the evil of loss-of-meaning, the Incomprehensibility.
Comma, the Commander
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Endashes reach out to hyphens…
I confess – I learnt endashes and emdashes only after I became a copy editor. In my previous post, "I have wondered what difference will it make when a reader sees an en dash." For very long, I doubted if there is any reader – OK, when I say any, I meant any reader...
A nerd and some hyphens
I have wondered what difference it will make when a reader sees an en dash. Will he think that it was some wrongly elongated hyphen, or will she make some educated guess? When I began as a copy editor, I hardly imagined that hyphens and en dashes are making the lives...
The serial semicolons
If you are a copyeditor, I'm sure you know serial commas, aka Oxford comma. That's the comma that precedes the last element in series as in He loves reading, editing, teaching, and leading the team. Yes, that one that follows "teaching". You as well know that serial...