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"God is in the details," the old saying goes, though any editor who has agonized endlessly over a comma or a hyphen might argue that a much darker entity lurks there.

This seminar takes an appropriately detailed look at punctuation and mechanics, including commas (what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s optional), semicolons, colons, quotation marks, apostrophes, dashes, hyphens, italics, and the ever-perplexing bullet points. The session presents up-to-date rules and guidelines, examines how punctuation and mechanics affect meaning (for instance, the relationship between commas and modifiers), and looks at some of the most useful style guides available. There will be group and individual exercises throughout the day, and participants are encouraged to bring along troublesome samples for discussion.

Frances Peck is an editor and writer who has worked with words for over 20 years. She prepared the Canadian edition of The St. Martin’s Workbook, a grammar exercise book; co-authored the popular HyperGrammar website; wrote Peck’s English Pointers, an e-book available through the Language Portal of Canada; and is a regular columnist for the journal Language Update. A partner with West Coast Editorial Associates, Frances lives in Vancouver and teaches editing at Douglas College and Simon Fraser University.