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Καλημέρα. Το "half listen" χρειάζεται ενωτικό σημείο; .. και τι γίνεται με το "half listening"; edit (from the exclamation thread) ...maybe i should have referred to myself as a possessive-apostrophe swinger?

Thanks, guys. This thread has been helpful; and in the name of harmony, I declare this thread closed. Interesting! (but do you really want the apostrophe thread visited upon you?) I prefer Chris's birthday to Chris' birthday, yet James' birthday to James's birthday, for some reason. So I'm a...

Thanks, nickel. I'll run it past "the spymaster" (my uncle) to see what he thinks.

Thanks, guys. What would happen in this instance (see the sentence that follows)? "James, James, our baby is alive. She is breathing. Thank you, holy mother of God. Maria is alive, thank you, thank you." He was startled by his wife's screaming etc... (James' wife was screaming the above...

Thank you, nickel. I wasn't aware of the longer (em) dash. Your additional comma in the second sentence makes sense and, you're right, the "but" is superfluous in the first sentence. I might replace hats with visor caps or visor hats?

There's a pause in the following two sentences, where the flow or cadence is interrupted, which I've indicated with a dash. The pause feels longer than a comma. Should I use a semicolon in place of the dash? They would spend this special day walking around Oradea, usually in circles of three or...

Καλημέρα. Πώς θα πρέπει να τοποθετηθούνε τα θαυμαστικά (και τα άλλα σημεία στίξης) στην περίπτωση παρακάτω (εντός διαλόγου). Χρησιμοποίησα εσκεμμένα μόνο κόμματα, τα οποία προφανώς θα πρέπει να αντικατασταθούν με τα κατάλληλα σημεία στίξης. "James, James, our baby is alive, she is breathing...

Wow! Thank you, nickel! I really appreciate your help. Good night from Australia, the south-east corner of the globe.

Should the exclamation mark be used to emphasise dialogue only? Can you use it in non-dialogue text (say in the instances below)? Their chances of escape were greatly increased by this tiny but invaluable tool! He had goosebumps when he saw what she had brought back with her!

Thank you, daeman. So Ioannina is a city in north-west Greece! Should northwest and north west therefore (strictly speaking) be reserved for the ordinal direction halfway between north and west on a compass?

Hi, nickel. Because I haven't really delved into it (or maybe I've forgotten the concept?), I (wrongly) assumed that a split infinitive arises whenever a word is inserted between a verb (e.g., they would immediately be), whereas (I now realise) an example of the construct would be "to boldy go"...

Query 2 Is Ioannina a city in north west Greece, north-west Greece or northwest Greece?

Thanks, guys. :) Okay! To be or not to pedantically be an infinitive splitter, what is the answer? re: "according to the severity of the offence" vs "in accordance with the severity of the offence", I'm going to choose the former. "in accordance with an offence" sounds wrong (c.f., say...

I hope I'm not becoming a nuisance (I will limit it to 10 sentences and others are welcome to submit any sentences they are working on). (Maybe the hyphen workshop should be deleted: it's relatively easy to google search compound words to determine if they need to be hyphenated or not...

In regards to "pumping up" the audience - The floor manager would probably oversee this duty - but the actual person (whose duty is to "pump up" the audience) is usually referred to as the "warm-up" guy (or the audience warm up guy).

Nickel made the suggestion, and I took it seriously (as nickel is a person who says what he means, and means what he says).:) To be honest, I haven't paid any attention to hyphen rules or conventions (presuming they exist) regarding compound words, so I often don't know which need to be...

Jump to the 2.20 mark! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f03HlnAPqEo

Thank you, nickel. Your help has been invaluable; I think I've learnt/learned a fair bit. (and thank you to everyone else who posted in this thread) Final Query 20z/20 :o In this sentence, I put a comma before "as" (as I felt a mental breather was needed). Did I do the right thing? ("it"...

Query 20a. Here's an ambiguous one - Achilleas was tipsy for the first time and ended up dancing on the tables while his friends clapped to his every gyration. Am I right in thinking that if "while" meant "at the same time" there's no comma here, whereas if it meant "whereas" there's a comma...

Thank you, nickel. That's what I call a thorough explanation. I don't know why I came up with my second option; it's unbalanced, as you pointed out, and (besides) I know you can't start the second clause with "you" immediately preceded by a comma (if I was treating "once that's completed" as a...