comma

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comma counter

informal Someone who is fastidious to the point of excess, especially when editing writing. The managing editor is such a comma counter—it's so aggravating! Instead of giving meaningful criticism to help us write better, she just nitpicks us to death about obscure grammar rules.

in inverted commas

Used to indicate that something one just said is untruthful, ironic, or disingenuous. ("Inverted commas" is another term for quotation marks, chiefly used in British English.) We were "taught," in inverted commas, by the teaching assistant, but we did most of our learning independently.

in inverted commas

BRITISH, SPOKEN

COMMON If you say in inverted commas after or before a word or phrase, you are drawing attention to the word, and showing that it is not an accurate way to describe the situation you are referring to. So, in what sense do you see the students as disadvantaged, in inverted commas? I think that the assumptions of some people were that we would take democratic decisions, well, democratic in inverted commas. Compare with quote, unquote.

in inverted ˈcommas

(spoken) used to show that you think a particular word, description, etc. is not true or appropriate: The manager showed us to our ‘luxury apartment’, in inverted commas.

Inverted commas are another name for quotation marks (‘ ’) or (“ ”).

comma-counter

n. a pedantic person; a pedantic copy editor. When you need a proofreader, you need a comma-counter.

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References in periodicals archive ?

Rewrite the following sentences, adding commas where necessary.

Chapter 31: Punctuation II--commas, colons, semicolons, parentheses, brackets, hyphens, dashes, and slashes

Commas, they decreed, are not for breathing; they are for communicating information about the relationship between clauses in a sentence.

Legal Writing Notebook: Toward a Unified Field Theory of Commas, Part I

If there were a comma after "shipment," it might have been clear that the law exempted the distribution of perishable foods.

A bill, a lawsuit and one very important (missing) comma: Bill drafters, take note: The absence of a serial comma in a Maine law could be costly

I think of him every time I consciously put a comma inside a quotation mark, as I just did.

Commas give us more than a little pause

The devil is in the details, specifically in the last comma. Since Bell Aliant wanted to sharply increase the pole rate and wanted the contractual flexibility to do that, it interpreted this clause as the right to terminate the agreement at any time, with one year's notice.

Comma law

The writing center coordinator characterized the thinking behind the FANBOYS mnemonic for me as follows: "A comma and a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so exclusively) work together as a meaningful semicolon: they join independent clauses that retain their independence once so joined.

The myth of FANBOYS: coordination, commas, and college composition classes

But most authors just present a wide array of marks such as the caret, the asterisk, the index, the obelisk, the double comma, the eclipsis, etc.

Teaching punctuation in Early Modern England

We use commas to set off appositives (words that identify a preceding noun or pronoun) that aren't essential but add parenthetical information:

Use comma sense when constructing stories

The other most frequently asked topic centered on using that ubiquitous, challenging mark: the comma. Even though rules for commas are far from absolute, tutors--like so many other writers--sought guidance on three uses of commas, areas about which many professional writers are unsure: after introductory elements, before coordinate conjunctions joining sentences, and preceding such as and as well as.

Grammatical worries of writing lab consultants

Concentrating on commas, it takes a simple sentence and shows how vastly different it can be with a little comma.

Gifts for Bookworms; Celebrate With Us! MAKE THIS YOUR Best Ever Christmas

Three million copies have been sold worldwide, uniting a growing band of people who become irate at the sight of an errant comma or apostrophe.

BOOKREVIEWS: CHILDREN'S BOOKS; Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Matter by Lynne Truss and Bonnie Timmons, Profile Books, pounds 8.99. The Perfect (Pop-Up) Punctuation Book by Kate Petty and Jennie Maizels, Bodley Head. pounds 9.99

She said: "If young people leave school without the basic knowledge of where to use commas and apostrophes, it can deter them from wanting to apply for a job as this would entail filling out a form or writing a covering letter, as well as completing a CV.

It is not the end of the world if pupils don't know how to use punctuation marks properly

The technique works with data separated by commas or tabs (Delimited) and names separated by spaces (Fixed width).

Technology Q&A: a fast way to increase type size ... Fill a page with dummy text ... How to suppress ScreenTips in Word ... Automatically install Windows XP updates ... How to create a blank screen pause in PowerPoint ... How to respond to invitations to turn off spam ... Customize drop-down menus ... A better way to split data from an Excel cell

Run-on sentences are complete sentences incorrectly strung together by commas. They are among the most common mistakes people make.

Tips for making writing easier; Part 8: using intonation to fix commas; if you develop an ear for how your writing sounds, you can fix some punctuation errors very easily

Which is down to lack of punctuation, especially commas. Consider your banner headline from July 17: ``Don't strip off and drink plenty of water to stay cool this summer''.

Letter: Why remove commas?

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