(3) To replace letters in … a dog's kennel. Use commas to separate words and word groups in a simple series of three or more items. While that may sound simple enough, many people are baffled by the little squiggle. Becoming a better writer is the best. two weeks' holiday. Go read it to learn the full process of writing professionally, including identifying what's interesting to write about, building a consistent writing habit, and how to fully hook readers. Yesterday I caught another 10lb bass. Bill Winterberg. This is the first punctuation mark that children learn: the period (or, if you’re British, “full stop”) at the end of a sentence. our boys' bedroom. A handy rule, whether writing about years, months, or any other period of time, is to use hyphens unless the period of time (years, months, weeks, days) is written in plural form: With hyphens: We have a two-year-old child. For example: The day before yesterday, I caught another 10lb bass. Some employees, e.g. Mrs. Jones waved to Sarah. a day's pay. We automatically catch everything from typos to nuanced grammatical issues and vocabulary improvements. Mignon Fogarty is the founder of Quick and Dirty Tips and the author of seven books on language, including the New York Times bestseller " Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing ." When a fronted adverbial is just one word (e.g., "Yesterday," "Here," "Now"), it is a common practice to drop the comma. Sarah ran to school. Note, however, that British English normally omits the period after Mr, Mrs, and Ms. The punctuation rules for apostrophes are some of the most commonly misused punctuation rules ever. Grammarly Premium offers advanced suggestions about word choice, vocabulary, run on sentences, tone, and more. There are only three times when you should use apostrophes. Rule 1. receptionists, need to work set hours. When the day of the week is provided before the month, the day of the week should be followed by a comma. The rules are pretty simple. Hyphens are often used to tell the ages of people and things. She is an inductee in the Podcasting Hall of Fame, and the show is a five-time winner of Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards. weak/week (1) weather/whether (2) wet/whet (2) whit/wit (1) whose/who's (42) wreak/wreck (7) yoke/yolk (2) your/you're (85) Conjunctions (29) Contractions (144) Correlative Conjunctions (87) both…and (14) either…or (19) neither…nor (40) not only…but also (15) Department of Redundancy Dept. Re-teach yourself 100 grammar basics. This punctuation post you're reading is a small part of my completely free handbook on Writing Well. Our free punctuation checker makes sure your text is clear, consistent, and error-free. Examples. 1. The store closed its doors for good on Wednesday, October 15, 1958. Example: My estate goes to my husband, son, daughter-in-law, and nephew. Apostrophes have four uses: (1) To show possession. Using Apostrophes. Mignon Fogarty. No hyphens: The child is two years old. To Show Possession When you want to make something possessive (to show ownership), use an apostrophe. (A comma is expected after an introductory adverbial phrase.) And punctuation, too, of course. With Grammarly Premium, you’ll have access to everything that comes with the free check, plus over a hundred additional advanced checks and features. Journalist, Atlanta. (2) To write time expressions. When the date appears in the middle of a sentence, commas should appear both before and after the year. An apostrophe is a mark of punctuation (') used to identify a noun in the possessive case or indicate the omission of one or more letters from a word.The apostrophe has two main jobs in English: to mark contractions and to indicate possession. We have a two-year-old. 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