GrammarPhile Blog

It’s no secret that proofreaders have their pet peeves. For this proofreader, the error that leaps off the page of nearly every written communication—from emails, to letters, to newspaper articles, to business documents, to her children’s compositions (a painful admission)—is the often undiagnosed comma splice. So prevalent has this mistake become that it fails to catch the attention of even the most prolific writers and copyeditors, and is considered normal and acceptable punctuation.

Have you ever noticed that many professional letters you receive at your home or business are absent one very important piece of information—the date? If I had a gold dollar for every piece of correspondence that was prepared without a date at the top to indicate when the news was issued, I could afford to miss every deadline imposed by their limited-time offers: