The Best Punctuation Book, Period now fully revised

Posted by June on April 20, 2026
LABELS: BEST PUNCTUATION BOOK, COMMAS, COPY EDITING, PUNCTUATION

The major publishing styles have changed a lot of rules, especially for punctuation. Prefixes are less likely to need hyphens, "etc." is no longer necessarily followed by a comma in book publishing, and more. The revised edition of The Best Punctuation Book, Period reflects all the newest rules. You can find it wherever you buy books and e-books.

A friendly reminder about "and I" vs. "and me"

Posted by June on April 13, 2026
LABELS: AND I VS. AND ME, GRAMMAR, I VS. ME, OBJECT PRONOUNS

A friendly reminder: Don’t say “between you and I.” And don’t say “The boss wants to talk with Bob and I” or “Thanks for meeting with John and I.”

It’s me. Me, me, me. In all those sentences, “I” is a poor choice. Yes, you could argue that the “I” form is idiomatic. But why would you want to? You’re just inviting judgment. And because it’s just as easy to use “me,” there’s no reason to come off like you don’t know the difference between object and subject pronouns.

And if you don’t know the difference now, you will in about thirty seconds. Here goes: “I” is a subject pronoun, which means it acts as the subject of a verb. “Me” is an object pronoun, which means it works as the object of a verb or the object of a preposition. So it’s:

I am here = I is the subject of the verb am

I believe in hard work = I is the subject of the verb believe

I knocked his block off = I is the subject of the verb knocked

Kiss me = me is the object of the verb kiss

He saw me = me is the object of the verb saw

Come with me = me is the object of the preposition with

Talk to me = me is the object of the preposition to

Easy right? Yes. And contrary to popular belief, it’s just as easy when you introduce another person. Nothing changes.

She and I are here = I is a subject of the verb are

Brad and I believe in hard work = I is a subject of the verb believe

My trusty robot and I knocked his block off = I is the subject of the verb knocked

Kiss my baby and me = me is the object of the verb kiss

He saw Craig and me = me is the object of the verb saw

Come with Claire and me = me is the object of the preposition with

Talk to Steve and me = me is the object of the preposition to

When in doubt, just try the sentence without the other person. If it’s “me” when Steve, Claire and the gang are absent, it’s “me” when they’re present, too.

Punctuation is an artificial construct, which is why it's less intuitive than grammar and usage

Posted by June on April 6, 2026
LABELS: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION

When it comes to grammar and word usage, English speakers can trust their gut. For example, if you know that “fewer” is usually better than “less” for countable things, you might nonetheless hesitate to say something like “I have one fewer dollar than I did yesterday.” “Fewer” just sounds worse than “less” here. That instinct is right: “less” is more correct to describe singular things, like one dollar.

Punctuation doesn’t work the same way. When it comes to questions of when to use an apostrophe or hyphen or where to put a period or comma, your instincts can’t be trusted.

Unlike language, which developed naturally, punctuation is manufactured — a set of rules that humans created for use in print. And because punctuation didn’t arise organically, it has less to do with your instincts.

That’s why your gut might tell you to use an apostrophe to form the plural in “We ordered a round of Bellini’s,” when in fact you should write “Bellinis.” The reason: You don’t use apostrophes to make plurals, except when you do, for example when writing student grades: “Henry got all A’s and B’s.”

Your gut may tell you to put an apostrophe in a past tense verb like “I demo’d the entire product line,” when in fact it should be “demoed.” You may be naturally inclined to use an apostrophe in verb forms like “He always just Venmo’s me the money,” when in fact it should be, well, I’m not sure, since Venmo isn’t in the dictionary as a verb. But I’d bet the farm on “Venmoed.” The reason: You don’t use apostrophes to conjugate verbs, except when you do.

Take, for example, “OK.” If you want to use it as a past-tense verb and you don’t want to spell it out as “okay,” how would you do that? OKed? OKd? O.K.ed? O.K.d? If you’re following AP style or Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, none of those. According to those sources, you use an apostrophe to make different forms of the verb: We OK’d the project. She OK’s projects like this all the time. They’ve been OK’ing these projects for years.

Why no periods in OK? Simply because that’s AP’s preference, which needn’t apply to you if you prefer O.K. Though that does make the verb forms like O.K.’d even weirder.

But if your hunch is that this means abbreviations like US and ID have no periods, your hunch is off, at least as far as AP is concerned. In that style, U.S. has periods, ID does not and, for the record, USA doesn’t either. You can defy all those rules and still be in line with professional publishers, though, since book publishing allows all those breaks from AP style.

Quotation marks are another danger zone for go-with-your-gut writers. People seem to understand that a period or comma comes before the closing quote mark when the whole quote is something someone said: “I like the beach,” Josie said. But when the quote marks are there to call out words, people assume the comma goes outside: Today there’s a “red flag warning”, according to the posted signs. That assumption makes sense both instinctively and logically, yet it’s not true. The comma or period, in American English at least, always goes inside.

Then there’s the issue of terms like “e-reader,” “email,” “e-book” and “esports,” all of which are correct in AP style, and none of which have much logic to how they’re hyphenated.

Anyone who knows, or intuitively understands, that two words describing a noun are hyphenated ends up writing some compounds correctly, “a well-appointed office,” which is right, and other compounds incorrectly, like “a beautifully-decorated office,” which is wrong because adverbs that end in “ly” are exceptions to this hyphenation rule.

If you want to get words right, don’t overthink them. If you want to get punctuation right, ignore your instincts and stick to rules: Don’t use apostrophes to make plurals unless it’s absolutely necessary. Don’t use apostrophes to conjugate verbs unless the dictionary says otherwise. Always put a period or comma before a closing quote mark. Don’t hyphenate “ly” adverbs. And check a dictionary to see if periods are preferred in abbreviations.

Our bizarre dependence on the letter S

Posted by June on March 30, 2026
LABELS: CONTRACTIONS, COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR, PLURALS, possessives, VERB CONJUGATION

One of the craziest things about the English language is our bizarre dependence on the letter S. We give it way too many jobs.

* S has to work like any other letter, representing a specific sound (spill, brass, star).

* We also use S to form plurals (apple —> apples).

* We use it to form possessives (Pete’s car, Mr. Smith’s hat).

* We use it to conjugate verbs. (I walk, he walks. You think, she thinks.)

* And we use it to stand in for our most common verb in contractions (Joe is nice —> Joe’s nice).

Other languages don’t have this problem. For example, in Spanish, S is used to make plurals (un gato, dos gatos). But to show possession, Spanish speakers use “de,” meaning “of” (el gato de Juan = Juan’s cat). And Spanish doesn’t rely solely on S to conjugate verbs (yo hablo, tu hablas, el habla, nosotros hablamos, ellos hablan).

Italian doesn’t even use S for its plurals. It has a different system in which one horse -- un cavallo -- becomes i cavalli in the plural.

Our weird dependence on S is at the root of a good many mistakes. For example, when people write “I went to the Thomas’s house” (which should be Thomases’) or “The dog wagged it’s tail (which should be “its”) or “Ray let’s the dog on the couch” (which should be “lets”).

The only way to avoid these mistakes is to keep track of whether your word is plural, possessive, both plural and possessive, a contraction, or a conjugated verb. And with all those pitfalls, it’s not hard to understand why someone could get so flustered as to think that one carrot plus another carrot equals two “carrot’s.”