Tag Archives: punctuation

Usings Commas with Job Titles

Commas Job Title

One of the most common errors I see in business writing is the misuse of commas with names and titles. If you’re trying to figure out when to use commas with someone’s job title, just use these formulas to see three correct ways to express the same information.

[Name], the [job title] of [company name], [rest of sentence].

The [job title] of [company name], [name], [rest of sentence].

[Company name] [job title] [name] [rest of sentence].

Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, plays the ukulele.

The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, plays the ukulele.

Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett plays the ukulele.

Why do job titles sometimes need commas and sometimes not? It depends on whether the sentence contains restrictive or nonrestrictive elements (also called essential or nonessential elements).

The top two examples each contain a nonrestrictive clause between the two commas, meaning that it doesn’t restrict the meaning of the rest of the sentence. If you removed that clause, the sentence would still make sense.

Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, plays the ukulele.

The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, plays the ukulele.

Warren Buffett plays the ukulele.

The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway plays the ukulele.

As my trusty reference guide Universal Keys for Writers explains,

“Commas signal that the extra, nonessential information they set off (useful and interesting as it may be) can be removed without radically altering or limiting the meaning of the independent clause. Think of paired commas as handles that can lift the enclosed information out of the sentence without making the sentence’s meaning confusing.”

But in the bottom example, Warren Buffett is a restrictive element, meaning that it restricts the meaning of the rest of the sentence. If you removed that information, you’d be left with an incomplete sentence.

Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett plays the ukulele.

Berkshire Hathaway chairman plays the ukulele.

Universal Keys commands, “Do not use commas to set off restrictive information.”

Next time you’re writing a sentence containing a name and job title, follow these steps to figure out if you need commas or not:

  1. Use the formulas at the top of this guide.
  2. Put commas where you think they should go, and then try removing them. If the sentence still makes sense, you need the commas. If the sentence sounds wrong, you need to leave the commas out.
  3. If you’re still not sure, send me an email. I will happily tell you the answer.

For more fun with commas, check out 5 Surprising Places You Need a Comma and 3 Surprising Places You Don’t Need a Comma.


Photo credit: By TheYellowFellow (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

3 Places You Can Use a Comma, or Not


Note: this is part three of a three-part series on comma use. Be sure to check out these posts as well:

5 Surprising Places You Need a Comma

3 Surprising Places You Don’t Need a Comma

My last two blog posts on commas were all about the official rules of where you do or do not place a comma. But not all comma rules are written in stone; this time, let’s take a look at the situations in which comma use is entirely up to you.

1. Before the last item in a series. When you’re listing three or more items, you can choose whether or not to use a comma before the final item in the series:

Red, white, and blue or red, white and blue

Word nerds often have very passionate opinions about this comma, which is called the serial comma or Oxford comma. For example, you can buy this t-shirt—

—even though Thomas Jefferson did not use a serial comma when he wrote about “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”:

People who use the AP Stylebook argue that the serial comma is not necessary because the and signals that the last item of the series is coming up. People who follow The Chicago Manual of Style or the MLA Style Manual say that it is necessary, pointing out that omitting the final comma can result in comical misreading:

And then non-serial-comma-users will point out that the sentence could easily be rearranged so it doesn’t imply that Washington and Lincoln were rhinoceri. The argument goes on forever.

As I always say about matters of style, the most important thing is consistency. Either always use an Oxford comma or never use one.

2. After a brief introductory word or phrase. If you have just a word or a few words introducing your sentence, you can choose whether or not to use a comma before the rest of the sentence.

On a whim, we decided to spend the weekend in Vegas.
In retrospect, it would have been easier to take a taxi.
Later, we’ll look back on this and laugh.

or

On a whim we decided to spend the weekend in Vegas.
In retrospect it would have been easier to take a taxi.
Later we’ll look back on this and laugh.

You get to decide when you want to use a comma with short introductory phrases. But if you are going to leave out the comma, make sure that doing so won’t cause misreading.

X Before eating the family always said grace.
Before eating, the family always said grace.

With a longer introductory phrase, you should always use a comma to prevent confusion.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure that I ever have seen a baby squirrel.
And on top of everything else, I came down with the flu.

There’s no real consensus about the exact number of words an introductory phrase needs to have before it requires a comma; most websites recommend somewhere between three and five, but none of the major style guides addresses it directly. I always use a comma after four words, but I picked that number arbitrarily. You can set your own rule.

3. With the word too. When using too to mean in addition, you can just put it in the sentence, or you can set it off with a comma (or a pair of commas if it’s mid-sentence).

I, too, wish summer could last forever.
“I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too.”

or

I too wish summer could last forever.
“I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too.”

Using a comma with too creates a pause around the word, giving it more emphasis. Read your sentence aloud, and if you naturally pause at too, add a comma (or commas). If it flows as part of the sentence, leave it be.

I hope this series on comma use has helped clarify when you should or should not use a comma, and when you can choose for yourself. If you have any questions about commas, please ; as these posts prove, I’m always happy to talk about comma use.

Let’s Make a Dash for It: The Different Dashes and When to Use Them

You have probably noticed that there are a few different kinds of dashes, but you may not know what they’re called and when they’re called for. Well, don’t despair—just follow this guide, and soon you’ll be deftly dashing off dashes.

I consulted The Chicago Manual of Style and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing and combined their advice to create this list of the most common usages of each dash. Using the AP Stylebook? Follow this asterisk.*

I may have omitted or glossed over a few of the less common usages, so if you think of an example that isn’t covered here, please leave it in the comments.

Hyphen

What it looks like:

How to type it: Type the button between the 0 and the +/= on your keyboard.

When to use it: The smallest dash, the hyphen, is commonly used to join words.

  • To connect compound words, compound phrases, and some prefixes

Reno doesn’t have world-class casinos like Las Vegas does.
He’s part of the do-anything-as-long-as-it-feels-good generation.
Sophia lived in a co-op during college.

  • To join coequal nouns

Actor-director Rob Reiner had his first onscreen role in ten years in The Wolf of Wall Street.

  • To separate groups of numbers

Call 1-800-555-1212.

  • To spell out a word

Sophia spells her name s-o-p-h-i-a.

  • To break up a long word at the end of a line (n.b., while this is common practice in books, it is rarely used online).

En Dash

What it looks like:

How to type it: In Microsoft Word, type a space, then a hyphen, then another space. The program will automatically convert the hyphen to an en dash. If you like keyboard shortcuts, use Ctrl + Alt + Hyphen on Windows or Option + Hyphen on a Mac. Or just copy and paste it from this post.

When to use it: The en dash, so named because it’s the width of an n, is usually used to separate numbers.

  • To mean up to and including

We’re almost at the end of the 2013–14 school year.
See pages 45–49 for more details.

  • To mean to

We took the New York–London redeye flight.
The Red Sox won the 2013 World Series by pummeling the Cardinals 6–1 in the sixth game.

  • With an unfinished range of numbers

Dianne Feinstein (1933–) is the oldest member of the Senate.

  • To replace a hyphen in a compound-adjective phrase when the compound is open or consists of two hyphenated phrases.

Is the post–Cold War stability unraveling?
The first-quarter–second-quarter comparison shows steady growth.

Don’t worry too much about this last one. As The Chicago Manual of Style puts it, “This editorial nicety may go unnoticed by the majority of readers; nonetheless, it is intended to signal a more comprehensive link than a hyphen would. It should be used sparingly, and only when a more elegant solution is unavailable.”

Em Dash

What it looks like:

How to type it: In Microsoft Word, type two hyphens immediately following a word and then start the next word (no spaces). The program will automatically convert the hyphens to an em dash. Or hold down Ctrl + Alt + Minus (on the numeric keyboard) on Windows or Shift + Option + Hyphen on a Mac. Or copy and paste it from above.

When to use it: The em dash, which is the width of an m, is used to create an aside or to separate and draw attention to part of a sentence.

  • Instead of parentheses

And the craziest part of it (and I swear this is true) was that the duck just snuggled up next to the dog and went to sleep.

And the craziest part of it—and I swear this is true—was that the duck just snuggled up next to the dog and went to sleep.

  • Instead of a comma

People at the party were already dancing on the table, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock.

People at the party were already dancing on the table—and it wasn’t even ten o’clock.

  • Instead of a colon

You only ever think about one thing: money.

You only ever think about one thing—money.

  • To introduce a pronoun that summarizes a preceding noun or series of nouns

God, country, family—these were the things he valued most.

  • To show a break in thought or dialogue

“Are you—wait a minute—you’re saying that you know who the murderer was?”

  • In front of explanatory expressions such as “that is” or “namely” or “for example.”

I keep my apartment clean—that is, when I have the time.

If you’re using an email service or a program that doesn’t easily allow special characters, use two hyphens instead of an em dash:

Latest update about the merger–it was just approved by the board.

*Writing for a newspaper? Good news! You only need one kind of dash. The hyphen—which the AP Stylebook simply calls a dash—is used for everything.

Instead of an en dash, just use one dash, no spaces:

We’re almost at the end of the 2013-14 school year.

Instead of an em dash, insert a space, a dash, and another space:

And the craziest part of it – and I swear this is true – was that the duck just snuggled up next to the dog and went to sleep.

If you use AP style regularly, you might want to turn of autocorrect for dashes, or Word will automatically turn the Space-Dash-Space combo into an en dash.

I hope this post helps you understand the rules about dashes. Have a question about using a dash in a particular sentence? Leave it in the comments or —I’ll be happy to offer advice.

Let’s Make a Dash for It: The Different Dashes and When to Use Them

You have probably noticed that there are a few different kinds of dashes, but you may not know what they’re called and when they’re called for. Well, don’t despair—just follow this guide, and soon you’ll be deftly dashing off dashes.

I consulted The Chicago Manual of Style and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing and combined their advice to create this list of the most common usages of each dash. Using the AP Stylebook? Follow this asterisk.*

I may have omitted or glossed over a few of the less common usages, so if you think of an example that isn’t covered here, please leave it in the comments.

Hyphen

What it looks like:

How to type it: Type the button between the 0 and the +/= on your keyboard.

When to use it: The smallest dash, the hyphen, is commonly used to join words.

  • To connect compound words, compound phrases, and some prefixes

Reno doesn’t have world-class casinos like Las Vegas does.
He’s part of the do-anything-as-long-as-it-feels-good generation.
Sophia lived in a co-op during college.

  • To join coequal nouns

Actor-director Rob Reiner had his first onscreen role in ten years in The Wolf of Wall Street.

  • To separate groups of numbers

Call 1-800-555-1212.

  • To spell out a word

Sophia spells her name s-o-p-h-i-a.

  • To break up a long word at the end of a line (n.b., while this is common practice in books, it is rarely used online).

En Dash

What it looks like:

How to type it: In Microsoft Word, type a space, then a hyphen, then another space. The program will automatically convert the hyphen to an en dash. If you like keyboard shortcuts, use Ctrl + Alt + Hyphen on Windows or Option + Hyphen on a Mac. Or just copy and paste it from this post.

When to use it: The en dash, so named because it’s the width of an n, is usually used to separate numbers.

  • To mean up to and including

We’re almost at the end of the 2013–14 school year.
See pages 45–49 for more details.

  • To mean to

We took the New York–London redeye flight.
The Red Sox won the 2013 World Series by pummeling the Cardinals 6–1 in the sixth game.

  • With an unfinished range of numbers

Dianne Feinstein (1933–) is the oldest member of the Senate.

  • To replace a hyphen in a compound-adjective phrase when the compound is open or consists of two hyphenated phrases.

Is the post–Cold War stability unraveling?
The first-quarter–second-quarter comparison shows steady growth.

Don’t worry too much about this last one. As The Chicago Manual of Style puts it, “This editorial nicety may go unnoticed by the majority of readers; nonetheless, it is intended to signal a more comprehensive link than a hyphen would. It should be used sparingly, and only when a more elegant solution is unavailable.”

Em Dash

What it looks like:

How to type it: In Microsoft Word, type two hyphens immediately following a word and then start the next word (no spaces). The program will automatically convert the hyphens to an em dash. Or hold down Ctrl + Alt + Minus (on the numeric keyboard) on Windows or Shift + Option + Hyphen on a Mac. Or copy and paste it from above.

When to use it: The em dash, which is the width of an m, is used to create an aside or to separate and draw attention to part of a sentence.

  • Instead of parentheses

And the craziest part of it (and I swear this is true) was that the duck just snuggled up next to the dog and went to sleep.

And the craziest part of it—and I swear this is true—was that the duck just snuggled up next to the dog and went to sleep.

  • Instead of a comma

People at the party were already dancing on the table, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock.

People at the party were already dancing on the table—and it wasn’t even ten o’clock.

  • Instead of a colon

You only ever think about one thing: money.

You only ever think about one thing—money.

  • To introduce a pronoun that summarizes a preceding noun or series of nouns

God, country, family—these were the things he valued most.

  • To show a break in thought or dialogue

“Are you—wait a minute—you’re saying that you know who the murderer was?”

  • In front of explanatory expressions such as “that is” or “namely” or “for example.”

I keep my apartment clean—that is, when I have the time.

If you’re using an email service or a program that doesn’t easily allow special characters, use two hyphens instead of an em dash:

Latest update about the merger–it was just approved by the board.

*Writing for a newspaper? Good news! You only need one kind of dash. The hyphen—which the AP Stylebook simply calls a dash—is used for everything.

Instead of an en dash, just use one dash, no spaces:

We’re almost at the end of the 2013-14 school year.

Instead of an em dash, insert a space, a dash, and another space:

And the craziest part of it – and I swear this is true – was that the duck just snuggled up next to the dog and went to sleep.

If you use AP style regularly, you might want to turn of autocorrect for dashes, or Word will automatically turn the Space-Dash-Space combo into an en dash.

I hope this post helps you understand the rules about dashes. Have a question about using a dash in a particular sentence? Leave it in the comments or —I’ll be happy to offer advice.

3 Surprising Places You Don’t Need a Comma

Get excited: This is the long-awaited follow-up to my post explaining the five surprising places you need a comma. Just as people tend to leave out commas when they should put them in, people tend to insert commas when they should leave them out. Here are three surprising places commas don’t belong:

1. Between a person’s title and name (when the title comes first). When you write someone’s title before the person’s name, you don’t need to use a comma in between:

UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks took office in 2013.
Facebook COO Cheryl Sandburg is a bestselling author.

When the title precedes the name, it functions as an adjective describing the person, and there’s no reason to separate adjectives from the nouns they describe.

Do note, though, that when the title follows the name, it is set off by commas. (See #2 on the list of places you need a comma).

Nicholas B. Dirks, the UC Berkeley Chancellor, took office in 2013.
Cheryl Sandburg, the COO of Facebook, is a bestselling author.

2. From something to something to something. A common way to group a list of items is to start the sentence with from and separate the items with to. Many people use serial commas to separate these items, but there’s no need; each to does its own separating.

I love all berries from strawberries to blackberries to huckleberries.
From boots to bicycles to broccoli, that store sells everything.

3. Between an independent clause and a dependent clause. This one is a bit tricky for people who are not naturally inclined to identify parts of a sentence, but I’ll try to make it make sense.

An independent clause has a subject and a predicate, and it can stand on its own as a sentence:

You should wear a jacket.

A dependent clause modifies an independent clause, and it can’t stand on its own:

Because it’s cold outside.

If you put the dependent clause first, you use a comma to separate the clauses:

Because it’s cold outside, you should wear a jacket.

However, if you put the independent clause first, you don’t need a comma between the clauses:

You should wear a jacket because it’s cold outside.

I hope this post helped you identify some places you may be inserting commas unnecessarily. And don’t miss part three of this series: places you can use a comma, or not.

This Punctuation Mark Is Not a Backslash: /

Grammar quiz time! Say the following URL out loud, as if you were giving it out over the phone: www.google.com/analytics.

Did you just say “double-u double-u double-u dot google dot com backslash analytics”? The good news is that you’re not alone; lots of people would say the same thing. The bad news is that you made an error: The punctuation mark / is not a backslash.

When it tilts to the right, / is just called a slash. In British English, it’s called a stroke. In English that nobody except the dictionary uses, it’s called a solidus or a virgule. If you want to clearly distinguish the mark from a backslash, you can call it a forward slash, but you don’t generally need to say the forward part.

The slash has a lot of uses: showing alternatives (he/she), writing fractions (1/3), expressing a two-year span (the 1997/98 fiscal year), writing dates (1/20/2013), abbreviating per (80 miles/hour), expressing a line break in quoted poetry (“Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky”), and—of course—to separate the domain from the path in a URL (www.npr.org/blogs/money/).

The backslash was invented for and is only used in programming language, so unless you’re a programmer, you probably won’t run into it very often. It is used for different purposes in different coding languages, but it usually indicates that whatever follows the backslash should be treated differently than what came before it.

The really good news is that this is one of the easiest punctuation rules to memorize: A backslash points backward (\) and a [forward] slash points forward (/). Remember this next time you’re giving out a URL, and you’ll be sure to say it right.

National Punctuation Day Celebration: Apostrophes


Today (September 24) is , the celebration of correct punctuation. In honor of the occasion, I penned an ode to the apostrophe—when to use it and, more importantly, when to leave it out. The post is over at Sin and Syntax, an excellent resource for writers. Here’s a taste:

The apostrophe has been giving writers trouble ever since it first appeared in English in the 16th century. In this century, stray apostrophes became so irksome in documents of the English town of Nottingham that its City Council instituted an “.” (Every time a staffer made an error with this curvy little mark, he or she had to put £1 into the box, with proceeds to go to charity.)

5 Surprising Places You Need a Comma

The comma is one of the most misused punctuation marks, but—unlike its dreaded cousin the semicolon—it’s absolutely necessary to everyday writing. Since there’s no getting around it, you should probably learn to use commas correctly.

But there are so many rules about comma use that they’re difficult to remember. My go-to grammar guide devotes nineteen pages to commas. Who apart from hardcore grammar nerds has time to learn this stuff?

The good news is that you’re already using commas correctly most of the time. The old rule of thumb is to insert a comma everywhere you naturally pause when speaking. It’s not a perfect way to decide whether to insert a comma, but it will help you get it right most of the time.

There are some places you need a comma that you probably won’t guess if you’re doing it by ear, though. Don’t forget to put a comma in these five places:

1. After a location or date that contains a comma. Most people are comfortable writing that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. And you know to say that the capital of the US is Washington, DC.

But if it falls in the middle of a sentence, you need to insert a comma at the end of the date or location.

On July 4, 1776, the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.
Washington, DC, is the capital of the US.

2. After someone’s title. As with the error with dates and locations, many writers leave off the second comma after a person’s title. If the title follows the name, it needs to be set off by a pair of commas.

Stephen T. Colbert, DFA, holds an honorary degree from Knox College.
Stephen W. Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA, holds four honorary titles.

3. Introducing a direct quotation. If you set up a direct quotation with a verb, you need a comma before the quotation starts.

J.M. Tyree observes, “The Death Star clearly has a garbage disposal problem.”
Jack Handy points out, “If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose.”

4. Continuing from a direct quotation. If your sentence keeps going after the quotation ends, put a comma at the end of the quotation (inside the quotation marks).

“The Death Star clearly has a garbage disposal problem,” observes J.M. Tyree.
“If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose,” points out Jack Handy.

But note: If the quotation ends with a question mark or an exclamation mark, leave out the comma.

“Holey rusted metal, Batman!” exclaims Chris O’Donnell’s Robin in one of the worst puns in a script full of them.
“How can a squirrel look cheap?” asks Michael Ian Black rhetorically.

5. After e.g. and i.e. When you use these abbreviations, make them lowercase with periods. And then insert a comma.

My favorite wild animals are the dangerous ones (e.g., polar bears, great white sharks, and porcupines).
I’ve learned a lot from the Muppets (i.e., it’s not easy being green).

Want to learn more about comma use? Don’t miss these follow-up posts:

3 Surprising Places You Don’t Need a Comma

3 Places You Can Use a Comma, or Not