The phrase such as requires a comma in front of it only if it’s part of a nonrestrictive clause.
Here’s an example of such as used correctly with a comma in a sentence:
The phrase such as pine and spruce is nonrestrictive, so you need a comma. How can you tell it’s nonrestrictive?
April 27 is Tell a Story Day, a great time for writers at all levels to finally share the stories that they’ve been keeping to themselves. But, what if the story you want to tell isn’t quite ready for its debut?
We encourage you to find a different story to tell! How, you ask? Read on . . .
Famous writers approached their writing in different ways, but one commonality involved extracting stories from real life experiences.
The New Yorker is a quirky magazine. Sure, it’s a go-to when you’re looking to read high-quality writing, but the magazine’s style is full of peculiarities. There are the double consonants where you don’t expect them, as in the word “travelled.” There’s the spelling out of numbers, even the really long ones. And there are the words like “coöperate” and “reëlect,” which are written with two tiny dots over the second o and the second e.
Mondays induce negativity like no other day. After all, weekends are straight-up awesome. If we’re lucky, we get to sleep in, enjoy a breakfast that’s not rushed, and maybe savor a cup of coffee while laughing at YouTube videos of dogs failing at being dogs. Sometimes, we have exciting activities planned. Sometimes we get to enjoy leisure time. And sure, sometimes we work. But let’s not talk about that here, deal?
Every November, wordsmiths around the globe take on the ultimate writing challenge—to crank out a 50,000-word novel in just thirty days. The event is called NaNoWriMo (an acronym for National Novel Writing Month), and last year it drew 431,626 participants. Although the format is meant to encourage quick, seat-of-your-pants writing, the words writers churn out during the annual event aren’t necessarily for naught.
Do you know the answer? Read on to find out which one is correct!
There are many (perhaps countless) homophones in the English language. These are words and phrases that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Here are three commonly confused homophones worth knowing:
1. A while vs. awhile A while refers to a period of time. In this construction, ‘while’ acts as a noun.
Prescriptive English grammar seems to be one of those things that either impassions you or inspires some level of dread. Lovers of English grammar and usage are energized by mastering the rules of a messy and disorganized language. For the rest of us, our feelings run the gamut from indifference to loathing as we muddle through a seemingly arbitrary organizational system and apply it to something as individual as language.
