If you’ve ever found yourself confused about the difference between a dash and a hyphen, and when to use a hyphen, you’re far from alone. When you handwrite them, they probably look exactly the same.

The beef had been aged dry for 30 days, and it changed my life. Not the way you’re thinking. I didn’t eat the life-changing meat. I just read about it in an article I was editing — and my relationship ...

Language has rules. For people who aren't too confident in their writing and grammar skills, the rules can be very useful, helping determine things like which verb form to use and where to put a ...

The apparent problem is that AP refuses to set down “rules.” As the stylebook says, using hyphens “can be a matter of taste, judgment and style sense.” Judging by many of the Twitter reactions to the ...

It seems we're always declaring our great fondness for this punctuation mark or that one. Oh, the whimsical nature of the semicolon and how smart she makes us feel. Oh, the gorgeous curves of the ...

About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited ...

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college," said Kurt ...