GRAMMAR & STYLE

Ellipsis Dots . . .

Oh, those pesky dots . . . People almost never handle them correctly. Is it three dots or four? And how do you use them? And how do you space them out? This article will offer some answers and some advice, with good examples.

Present Participle (Misuse)

I doubt you have any idea what I am talking about here. The misuse that I am referring to is never the subject of conversation, though I see the error in print almost routinely and hear it in news broadcasts just about every day. Even good writers make this mistake. It is a tough issue to explain, but fortunately examples make it much easier to understand.

The basis of the error is that people tack a present-participial phrase onto the end of a sentence as if the phrase is a final verb that can then conclude or summarize the sentence. But participles are not verbs and do not properly function in this way. Examples make the problem easy to understand. This essay explains the issue in detail.

— Updated January 2026.