I'm a young Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today we're talking about a particularly interesting kind of question and about how to use

the semicolon.

A punctuation mark that seems to cause a lot of people anxiety and we're going to fix

that.

You will never wonder when to use it again.

Let's get started.

This first piece is by Erin McKin.

Some days it seems that the most common kind of understanding is misunderstanding.

Every conversation, not to mention each email, I am or text message, is rife with opportunities

for crossed circuits and hurt feelings.

There's no end of advice about how to avoid miscommunication.

Take things simple, take your time, be aware of cultural differences.

But missing from all these communication helper lists is a little linguistic tick that

most people use every day, the tag question.

You know what tag questions are, don't you?

Tag questions are those little questioning upticks, usually found at the end of a sentence

that greets the conversational wheels.

Like that, don't you?

This sees these questions as coming in two different flavors, the kind that asks for

information or confirmation called modal tags, as in you've got the tickets, right?

...