Posts tagged punctuation
Prof. Brooks Landon, U. Iowa, Ph.D. U. Texas at Austin. Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read (Great Courses) (2013). p. 124. Listen to the stri...
Someone told me that it's incorrect or outdated punctuation to put a comma after "said" in dialogue tags such as the following (from an old book we're reprinting): “I shouldn’t wonder if you co...
It is common to omit end-dots in lists with very short items: Shop list: * Milk * Bread * Probably eggs It is common to use end-dots in lists with long descriptive items: Things which should b...
Sometimes job listings use slashes and hyphens in the title of the job to specify specialties or other job characteristics. For instance, here are two listings on stack exchange: Data Scientist - D...
So I've got a bit: Alta blinked. She pushed on, smiling, “—the argument. When the argument succeeds, which I still don’t fully deem, even after that—it looks to me like you’ve still got to do a...
I occasionally use parentheses in scientific writing when a piece of information is related to a previous statement but not to the central story. Is it bad style in scientific writing to use pare...
I am a bit crazy about punctuation and I have a question that I'm struggling to find a consensus on. For dialogue (especially in fiction), I always use the standard format: "I told you I wante...
I have been accused — shock, horror — of using the dash (the one that indicates a three-quarters pause) too much in my fiction. Thing is — I quite like the effect (the space inserted in sentences b...
The wizard slid the application over to the goblin. "I'm afraid, Mister Barnes, we cannot accept your letter of resignation at present. You are simply too ugly to qualify for an exit scheme...
In first person narrative, would it be acceptable to use a period in place of a question mark when the narrator is asking a rhetorical question? example: My car broke down again. Why does this alw...
If I am quoting a question, and the quotation comes at the end of a sentence with a citation, where does the question mark go? I have been told that question marks (and full stops) should come afte...
The Chicago Manual of Style: When a word or term is not used functionally but is referred to as the word or term itself, it is either italicized or enclosed in quotation marks. Proper nouns...
I'm hoping for guidance on several very similar situations, which I suspect are all meant to be punctuated and spaced differently. Stuttering How would you write someone stuttering out the word "...
I'm writing my first novel, and I'm using a style that seems fine to me, but I'm not positive I'm punctuating correctly. I hate overusing dialog tags. I like the technique of sometimes avoiding th...
I am writing a critical analysis of an article involving a "rule". Every time the authors mention the word "rule", it is in quotations. Would it be correct to also include "rule" in quotations ever...
I'm writing a paper that goes something like this: To quickly summarize MIT is located in Massachusetts FIU is in Florida, The tuition cost for MIT is 45 thousand versus 6 thousand for 30 credi...
A lot of my favorite writers use ellipses, in both narration and dialogue. I know the rules for them, and how they are broken (somewhat) for fiction. The problem I have is that when I vacillate bet...
If I write a section of terminology and definitions in academic writing, which is the correct unicode character for the "-"? Is it the dash or is it a hyphen? For example: CPU - Central Process...
Let's say two characters are conversing and one character interrupts the other in mid-sentence. How would that actually be shown in dialog? I have seen some use a hyphen at the end of the sentence ...
The American standard is to use double quotation marks ("example") and the British standard is to use single quotation marks ('example'). Style guides insist that you should be consistent regarding...
I'm confused about proper punctuation, spacing, and capitalization when a character is speaking and is interrupted by actions without continuing dialogue. "Maybe we could—" My phone rang. "Maybe ...
In the email I'm writing there are three separate points. The last two ones are not so long so that each of them can fit in a single paragraph. However, the first one is needed to be split into two...
I feel like I'm using too many commas. I'm a pretty young writer and I didn't exactly pay attention in English class very often (I was too busy reading a shit load of books and passing with C+'s) a...
I have a sentence: ... to further everyones agenda; revenge. Is this the correct punctuation? Or should the semicolon simply be a comma? I know this is an incredibly dumb question and I should kn...
Excuse me if I am on the wrong StackExchange site. I write about Physics in English and typeset that with LaTeX. So I have a variable c, and there are two of them in the same expression. I want to...
The oxford comma is the second comma in the sentence I like the colors red, white, and blue. Every grammar textbook I've ever seen, as well as the major style guides, feels that this is "proper" de...
I am writing my thesis report and I am doubt which one is acceptable and correct? 1- Section 1 1-2- Subsection 2 Or this way? 1 Section 1 1-2 Subsection 2 Please indicate if using a das...
On the use of em dashes. Is it better to omit the spaces between the words and the dash, or is it preferable to separate them with spaces instead? For example: No spaces: It's time to take a nap...
I created this question for two reasons: I want to know if it is proper to place a comma after the word and (in bold) below. This sentence is kind of clunky, like many of my sentences, and it hel...
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