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Punctuation

© Copyright 2003, Jim Loy

Punctuation involves the little marks between the letters, periods, question marks, exclamation marks, commas, apostrophes, quotes, parentheses, colons, semicolons, ellipses, hyphens, dashes, etc. Here are a few rules:

  1. A Sentence ends with a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark. An interjection usually ends with an exclamation mark (Ouch!), but may end otherwise (Hm?).
  2. A complete sentence that is a comment on the previous complete sentence is either separated by a period or a semicolon. If this second sentence begins with "and," "or," "but," or something like that, then the two sentences are separated by a comma: "The money was stolen, and the thief got away." Prefer this to beginning a sentence with "and" or "but."
  3. Apostrophes are used for contractions ("it's" for "it is") and for possessive nouns.
  4. Quotes are used around direct quotes. In "He said that he would be home," the inner quote (he would be home) is not a direct quote. If an entire paragraph is a quote, some people do not end with the closing quote mark. Quotes within quotes are usually done with single quotes (apostrophes). A quote of someone's thoughts may or may not have quote marks. Periods and commas go inside the closing parenthesis. But if you are very concerned that the reader get the exact quote right, and they might think that the period is part of the quote, then put the period outside: My password is "monty".
  5. Hyphens are usually a matter of spelling, look in the dictionary.
  6. There are several forms of parentheses: commas, (parentheses), {brackets}, [square brackets], and --dashes--. In print, a dash is longer than a hyphen; on a typewriter, a dash is two hyphens.
  7. Ellipses are three periods with spaces between. You can get away without the spaces.
  8. Abbreviations usually have periods: Mr., Dr., Ph.D. Some do not: FBI, NAACP. Some are optional: U.S.A. or USA. Acronyms do not have periods: NASA or BASIC. Use a dictionary to be certain.

That leaves commas. A comma is used where you want to make the reader pause. A long pause should be indicated by ellipses (. . .) or a period (even if that makes an incomplete sentence). There are many other (formerly mandatory) uses of commas. You can dispense with most of them, to prevent the reader from pausing. See above (#2 and #6) for two uses of commas. Here are some more:

  1. Between a quote and the rest of the sentence: I said, "Howdy," or "Howdy," I said.
  2. In a list: "We had ham, eggs, and orange juice." The final comma (before "and") is optional. But be consistent.
  3. Commas may be used much like parentheses (#6 above): "I eat, on most days, at 12:00." "Incidentally, I've already eaten." This usage is preferable to using parentheses. It is possible to eliminate such commas, to make the sentence smoother, if the meaning is still clear.

Rules are made to be broken. But don't break them accidentally, break them for a good reason.

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