Articles>Writing>Style Guides>Grammar

One Space Or Two Spaces?

When I began writing technical documentation and courseware for Guru Labs, I asked a question during training about whether we should be putting two spaces after a period, colon, question mark and exclamation point, or one. The answer shocked me, as I was hoping for the standard answer as a means of teaching the rest of my colleagues. The answer was ONE space, not two. Then, I listened to the argument.

Use of Hyphens

This page collects a series of notes from readers of my newsletter, and my responses to those notes, arising from an article in issue 60, 13 May 2002. I thank those who took the time to write and explain why some hyphen usage is considered to be correct or incorrect.

Appearing for Sentence

Commas, semi-colons and colons are the sentence tidiers. Used correctly, they'll give your written language the 'punctuation' that pauses, voice modulations and gestures provide when you speak.

Caught in the Active

Have you been told, perhaps by your computerised grammar checker, that too many of your sentences are passive? Have you heard the rule of thumb that at least 80 percent of the sentences in any passage should be active? If you've had the problem or heard the rule, and wonder what the terms active and passive mean, and why one is good and the other frowned on, this article is for you.