Your impression is on the whole justified, and to this I referred as 'a special stylistic effect' that placing a comma may have. Consider this: - Do I stay any chance of winning? - For you to win will be almost impossible. For him to win

Yes, you can do that: "Damn, he's astute!" or "Damn, is he astute!" (I'd probably use a comma). The emphatic use should not be confused with the use of "damn" to express annoyance: "Damn! He's

The ambiguity might be clearer if we simplify the sentence: "Ask John when we leave." 1) As we are walking out the door, ask John (about something that is not specified in this sentence.) 2) Ask John, "John,

Both sentences are grammatical. The first one is actually not really a question unless the speaker's intonation rises towards the end. Without the right intonation the sentence is just negative and is usually written without a question mark:

I'd vote for the second sentence. Indirects don't require a question mark (according to many style manuals). Also, I test by saying the sentences out loud. Questions typically end with a rising intonation, whereas statements tend to end

I can't see the ambiguity. The 'when' seems to pin ... comma seems wrong in that sentence. Am I missing something? Yes, it can mean either At some point while she was doing her homework, the phone rang. Or At the ... fact that there

But it is (or was) a strange norm, since it ... presumably by those who chose this accent as a 'norm'. There is certainly tension here between the connotations of "standard" and "usual" which the word undeniably

Bob Cunningham wrote on 07 Sep 2004: Master of the universe and supreme ruler of all living beings wrote on 06 Sep 2004: One of the reasons I prefer the 2nd convention, the ... know of a very few in which its absence does. Mark Israel's FAQ

... } As for "could care less", from my experience I reject the } idea that it expresses some sort of irony. The times I've } heard it, it has been said with exactly the intonation } that's used for saying the correct

So, for , your teacher wanted you to write ... you to write ? Well, I was only about 6 or 7 years old, and that was 40 years ago. Maybe what she said ... Paris IN France, When in doubt THEN leave it out. I still think the comma before the