Use a comma to separate two independent clauses when they are joined by one of seven coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so). We were out of ice cream, so I went to the store. (c) ...

See how coordinating conjunctions connect independent clauses without breaking sentence flow. Learn the correct punctuation around these seven common words.

In school, I was taught about conjunctions (e.g. or and and) and the role they play in sentence structure – they are linking words. They do what they say on the tin: con-(i.e. with) and -junction (i.e ...

Liz in Newport Beach, Calif., posed a good question about commas. Consider the following two sentences. "Days are usually great, but, when they aren't great, they still pass in 24 hours." "Every word ...

A student in my “History of the English Language” course stopped me after class a few weeks ago and asked, “I was just wondering—how do you feel about the Oxford comma?” She could have asked about the ...

Comma mistakes happen all the time, but serious comma mistakes — errors that change your meaning or mislead your reader — are rare. It seems like every day I see a comma placed after a quotation mark, ...