Q: Years (and years!) ago when I learned grammar and usage from the Sisters of St. Joseph in a Brooklyn, N.Y., grammar school, a series of nouns used a comma to separate the nouns until the last one, ...

Before I started teaching copy-editing courses, I assumed that one of the nice things about being a teacher would be sharing hard-earned expertise with wide-eyed students awed by my vast knowledge.

This week’s episode is all about another facet of comma usage: How do you know whether to set something off in commas? Are the added words essential (restrictive ...

An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. Impact Link People who care about grammar love the serial comma, aka the Oxford or Harvard comma. They love it because they were instructed to use it in ...

Today, we’re kicking off a video series devoted to language in all its facets: grammar, syntax, vocabulary, spelling, usage, and punctuation. As much as possible, we’ll use current issues of the ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. Recently, in a column about other things, we asked whether you needed a comma in the phrase “the large blue box.” The answer ...