“People don’t know why they get so upset about language,” David Crystal told me recently, over Skype from his home in Wales. “ ‘Potato’s,’ with an apostrophe ‘S,’ ” he offered, as an example of the ...

Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. Word, word, word, word, word, punctuation mark. This is how we read. Sometimes there are more words, ...

Is a full stop really worth four commas? And should everybody avoid the semi-colon? This book from the popular linguist David Crystal will amuse and instruct A couple of weeks ago I saw David Crystal ...

Preparing for your KS2 English SATs? This Year 6 spelling, punctuation and grammar quiz is designed to help you practise for your English SATs tests with interactive questions including prefixes and ...

Punctuation is a set of specific marks or symbols that we used to express the meaning of our sentences clearly and to make the flow of the text smooth. It shows us where we need to pause, it separates ...