As a writer and editor, I've seen many confused acts of punctuation. Without question, the comma holds the title for the most commonly misused mark.

First, let me admit that in my seedy, collegiate youth, I was once an overuser of semicolons. I, like many writers at that level, saw the semicolon as a softer end stop, a two-thirds period. I thought that longer sentences were academic and proof of my writing prowess.