Many or Multiple?
Multiple is often not a good synonym for many Read More
“Why Should We Sweat This Small Stuff?”
The notes posted here don’t concern small points . . . Read More
The Waste of Haste: Premature Introductions
A common type of jumble in prose results from premature introductions . . . Read More
A Regrettable Shortcut: Faculty Referring to Individuals
Faculty is one of a category of nouns that refer to groups of people as a body . . . Read More
Must quotations always be introduced with wording like “So-and-so writes”?
No. There are innumerable ways to weave a quotation gracefully into your prose. As long as the quotation’s purpose and source are clear, you need… Read More
What kind of number do I put in the parenthetical citation for a poem—a page number, a line number, or another part number?
The ultimate goal is to be concise and to cite what is most useful to the reader. For quotations from a poem in a print… Read More
News articles are sometimes credited to agencies like Reuters and the Associated Press. Should the agencies be cited as the authors of these articles?
No. News agencies distribute stories from a vast pool of journalists. The name of an agency is not a meaningful indicator of authorship. Moreover, local… Read More
Is it wrong to type spaces before and after a dash?
The appropriateness of spaces before and after a dash depends on various considerations: the typeface used, the medium (print, online), and so on. In the… Read More
Is it ever appropriate to use see or see also in a parenthetical citation?
The purpose of every parenthetical citation is to tell the reader to see a work, so the word see would almost always be redundant. See… Read More
The rules for positioning a parenthetical citation next to a final period seem different with run-in quotations and block quotations. What is the logic here?
Run-in quotations and block quotations follow the same logic, although the differences in their formats call for differences in punctuation. First, let’s look at a… Read More