The début of our new series on language in all its facets: grammar, syntax, vocabulary, spelling, usage, and punctuation. In this episode, Mary Norris talks about commas. at the New Yorker, sometimes ...

Last week, we started discussing the differences between a phrase, clause and a sentence. We defined a phrase as a group of words without a subject and a predicate, though standing together to form a ...

brendan-c on flickr John ate a slice of pepperoni pizza, and drank a bottle of beer. If that sentence doesn't make you involuntarily scowl, then you do not have a proper understanding of commas. Yet ...

We are concluding our discussion on phrases, clauses and sentences today. In the last two classes, we compared the three, underlining how a sentence is usually a combination of clauses and phrases. We ...