In British English^x, Commas^x

Just my take on it. Let's look at the structure of an e-mail or a letter for that matter. Simply said you have 3 parts. 1. opening or greeting 2. body 3. closing or ending NOTE: greeting means hello and not good-bye. As was pointed out " yours faithfully " is out of style but it still can...

I learned the American rules for punctuation: periods and commas always go inside the quotation marks; colons and semi-colons always go outside; and question marks and exclamation points go where they actually make sense. I agree it's not logical, and sometimes I want to rebel and put that period...

Re:'Call a porter, it’s too much luggage for you to carry.' I would consider this a comma splice error (acording to North American usage), and replace the comma with a semi-colon; however, I have seen this 'error' on the BBC website several times, and I am wondering if that is correct usage in...

Hi, For a letter, in the greeting part, "Dear **" usually ends with a comma, if I'm remebering it right. I found one article on the website says that if you really want to make it formal you need to put a colon instead of a comma. Is that so? Or to put a comma or a colon concerns with the...

This may be an expression exclusive to British English. I can only tell you what it means to an American. Years ago, there used to be animated cartoons presented at the movies before the feature film was shown. At the end of some of these there was a cartoon character who said, in a very happy,...

Please read the sentence and suggest if the comma should be retained. Generally, I believe such commas were used in British english. Are they still used? "Provide a suitable answer for the following, to suit the requirements given on the left."

I'll try to give a partial answer. A relative clause is a portion of a sentence that adds information about a previous noun in the sentence. The previous noun is called the antecedent. Relative clauses are marked by relative pronouns: that, which, who, whom, and others. Examples will...

The difference is present in American English, not normally in British English, however use of the American rule is harmless even in Britain. "that" effectively makes the right hand clause into an adjective. For example "This is the house that Jack built" -- here "that Jack built" is part of the...

Well, both or neither, really, because "rules" governing punctuation aren't really "rules" in the sense that rules govening nouns, verbs and adjectives are rules. Punctuation "rules" vary considerably, often from publisher to publisher, or from newspaper to newspaper. I can tell you that...

Listen guys - this is a difference between British English and American English. Your grammar book will depend on where it was published. (And Microsoft Word's grammar checker will use the American rules even if you tell it you live in Britain, because it's stupid). What I said in my earlier...