Appositives and Subject-Verb Agreement with Mowgli (Punctuation Puzzle)
By Zac Kieser and Donna Reish My writing assistant, Zachary Kieser, and I are having so much fun coming up with these Punctuation Puzzles! They are interesting ways to brush up on grammar and usage skills that you might be rusty on—and great for junior high and high...
Plural Nouns and Passed-Past Confusion With Cinderella (Punctuation Puzzle)
He passed the test or He past the test? Go passed the house or Go past the house? Passed and past are super confusing–as evidenced in social media every where. It’s not just students who have trouble with this confusing word...
Proper Nouns and Quotations with Pinocchio (Punctuation Puzzle)
Oh, proper nouns and quotations. Where do I start to explain the myriad of difficulties that students (and adults!) have with these. Am I starting to sound more like Lamenting Lady than Language Lady in the openings to these Punctuation Puzzles? If so, I am sorry!...
Prepositional Phrases and Commas with Dumbo (Punctuation Puzzle)
Comma rules are super subjective. As a matter of fact, I tell my upper high schoolers that commas following sentence openers will generally not be the errors in SAT/ACT/PSAT testing sentences. These rules are that subjective! I hear and recognize all of the commas in...
Raise/Rise and Indirect Quotations with Cinderella (Punctuation Puzzle)
Zac and Cinderella do a great job explaining the RISE and RAISE problems in today’s puzzle. But RISE and RAISE cannot be taught alone—so Zac has prepared two more Punctuation Puzzles scheduled to follow this one about those similar confusing word pairs—Set/Sit and...
Indefinite Pronouns and Confusing Pronouns with Mulan (Punctuation Puzzle)
Welcome to another Punctuation Puzzle! This one is a doozy…and Zac does an amazing job teaching through it. So I won’t take much of your time in this introduction except to point out two important teacher tips for you: 1) It is imperative that students learn...
Homophones and Parentheses (Punctuation Puzzle)
by Zac Kieser & Donna Reish "Homophones. Homophones. Homophones. Homophones!" Did you sing along with the old Veggie Tales song? I have never seen a Veggie Tale video, and I can even sing that! (Along with "Where Is My Hair Brush?") The song is catchy, but the...
Parallelism and Noun Markers (Articles) with Alice In Wonderland (Punctuation Puzzle)
Parallelism. Some days I can’t even spell it, much less explain it really well. Some grammar concepts are like that. They seem out of reach...until you get a really great example, like today’s Alice in Wonderland Punctuation Puzzle sentence. The moral of this...
Capitalization & Items in a Series with Alice in Wonderland (Punctuation Puzzle)
This week's Punctuation Puzzle has to do with capitalizing references to people and commas with a series of three or more. The latter causes much confusion (and is covered, in part, in a recent LL slideshow, "5 Tips for Coordinating Conjunctions"). Moreover, the...
Compound Sentences (Punctuation Puzzle)
I’m bringing back the Punctuation Puzzle! Many readers said they enjoyed these puzzles....so I will be bringing you one each week. (I love them too!) For your Character Ink Cottage Class kids and others with upper level students, do these with them! They will be so...
Colons with Belle and Beast (Punctuation Puzzle)
Colons are seriously hard! If people use them at all, they often use them wrong. Generally speaking, people use colons following a speech tag in two instances (both of which are incorrect): a. Following any speech tag--- Donna said: "This is how you use colons." b....
Subordinate Clause and Possessive Nouns (Punctuation Puzzle)
By Zac Kieser and Donna Reish Welcome to another exciting episode of Punctuation Puzzle! 🙂 I am having so much fun creating these with my writing assistant, Zac Kieser. Grammar and usage can be super confusing—and these puzzles are a great way to learn with the steps...
Introductory Material and Commas with Peter Pan (Punctuation Puzzle)
By Donna Reish & Zac Kieser Amazing Punctuation Puzzle this week! And not just because it is about a favorite attraction of mine at Disney World. (Btw, 267 days til our next family Disney trip!) Zac does an amazing job explaining sentence openers and comma...
Compound Possessive Nouns and Pronouns with Mowgli (Punctuation Puzzle)
Compound possessives! They are incredibly tricky! Zac does a great job teaching them in this week's Punctuation Puzzle, but I am going to give you three "Tricky Tricks to Help It Stick" right up front about possessives (a little cheat sheet before the test!): 1) When...
Split Quotations with Snow White (Punctuation Puzzle)
If you want to show off in your writing, use a quotation properly. If you want to REALLY show off in your writing, use a split quote properly. Okay, maybe only one to three percent of the people reading your writing will know that your split quote has been written...
Degrees of Comparison with Cinderella (Punctuation Puzzle)
Two of my least favorite things to teach: direct/indirect objects (and predicate nominatives) AND degrees of comparison. (Okay, maybe that is like my four least favorite things to teach!) The first ones (direct/indirect/pn) are just soooo complicated (and they can’t...
Commas with Adverb Openers and Which Clauses at End of Sentence with Belle and Beast (Punctuation Puzzle)
Since it is the first of September, I assume that you have started school (or maybe Tuesday after Labor Day?) and are having review of many of last year’s concepts. And part of that might be comma review. I have a love-hate relationship with commas (though mostly...
Pronoun Cases and Negative Words (Punctuation Puzzle)
Subjective. Objective. Big words (as many grammar terms are—adjectival clause or appositive, anyone?) to teach to young student. And yet, even young students need to know when to use he and him—less they end up saying, “Him took my toy” into adulthood! Like everything...
Commas with Interjections and Adjectives with Dumbo (Punctuation Puzzle)
Today’s Punctuation Puzzle brings to light an important comma rule that is not readily known. Commas are super subjective and thus challenging to write with. So whenever we can have a fairly fool-proof trick (or tricks in this week’s puzzle!) up our sleeve to make the...
Led/Lead; Pique/Peek/Peak; and Compound Sentences (Punctuation Puzzle)
We were lead into this little room which really peaked our curiosity and then we were surprised by they're generosity We were LED: (1) Lead with a short e (rhymes with head) is a metal or pencil lead; (2) Led is the past tense of lead (rhymes with bead). We were led...
Periods and Commas Inside Ending Quotation Marks (Punctuation Puzzle)
He said words that would be remembered forever One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind Here is a possible answer with the reasons below. He said words that would be remembered forever: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." 1. The first half...
Led vs. Lead & Alot vs. A Lot (Punctuation Puzzle)
By Zac Kieser and Donna Reish Today we have a PUNCTUATION PUZZLE---plus a couple of other errors for you to find! The shepherd lead them to the brook and they drank alot, because they were very, hot, and thirsty. Here is the answer with an explanation for each aspect...
Commas and Periods in Quotes (Punctuation Puzzle)
By Zac Kieser and Donna Reish Okay...here is another Punctuation Puzzle for you to solve! Try to figure out where punctuation marks should go--before you look below at the answers/explanations! 🙂 I read the magazine article titled "Baby Games" and I read an...
Commas and Periods with Quotation Marks (Punctuation Puzzle)
Okay...here is another Punctuation Puzzle for you to solve! Try to figure out where punctuation marks should go--before you look below at the answers/explanations! Smile... I read the magazine article titled "Baby Games" and I read an encyclopedia essay called "Baby...