Like a lot of us who have borne a lifelong love for language and words, I have always been almost as fascinated by the mechanics of writing as by the style and substance.
Spelling bees were the bomb for me when I was younger (and I admit to participating in more than one adult version as well), and diagramming a sentence was my jam in high school—the order and logic and lucidity of it all! In its precision and clarity, language could be like math, except actually fun. Those of us who find our way into editing careers often seem to be as left-brained as we are right-brained.
Punctuation can be as thrilling as grammar: The wrongly maligned semicolon magicking a comma-spliced run-on sentence into an elegant complex thought; the jocular, informal em dash heralding an impending related tangent, explanation, elaboration, or contradiction that reflects so well the way many of us think and talk.
But judging by the heated throwdowns over the humble Oxford comma, ellipses, my cherished semicolon, and others, people have feelings about punctuation. Sometimes uncomfortable ones.
Let’s see if we can assuage some of those emotional reactions by clearing up at least a few vexing little punctuation bugaboos. Punctuation isn’t an author’s nemesis, but her helpful handmaiden; think of it as the traffic signals of writing to guide your reader smoothly through the flow of your story.
Punctilious Punctuation
Let’s start with the most egregious punctuation violation: If you are still using two spaces after a period, I invite you to stop it. That convention is a relic of the earliest days of typography, and using it may make you look like a dinosaur. Of course, you are welcome to continue insisting upon it, but let’s acknowledge that it’s a bit of an affectation, like wearing a monocle, isn’t it?
You go on and do you if you must, Mr. Monopoly, but in today’s youth-obsessed, debut-obsessed world, do you really want to draw attention to the fact that you learned a QWERTY keyboard in “typing class” on a manual Smith-Corona with only one monospaced “font” that required the extra spacing for readability?
While we’re at it, you might let go of your beef with the Oxford (serial) comma. For some reason it’s become regarded as the comma of commoners—highbrow lit-rary folk seem to eschew that helpful little device, as do Anglophiles, as Brits tend not to use it. Revisit some of the many hilarious misunderstandings you risk by not using an Oxford comma and let them encourage you to take a moment for that single extra keystroke of comprehension and clarity.
And here’s the skinny on ellipses: No more does the venerated world of publishing add a persnickety little space between each dot. Close those puppies right on up…just like that…. BUT:
- A complete sentence that trails off requires both a period and an ellipsis, like this one does….
- But then you must add a space before the next sentence…. You know?
- With an incomplete sentence, not so much… Three will do just fine there, but we still need the space after the last one for a new sentence.
- If it’s still part of the same sentence…of course…then close all those spaces right up. No sense wasting them.
Quotation Vexations
Speaking of our mother country, British writers, as well as AP-trained journalists, will use single quotes (‘ ’) where double quotes (“ ”) are called for in American style, and vice versa. Unless you are writing for a UK or media audience, double quotes are standard for any quoted material, as well as anything else you want to put in quotes, like sound effects, unspoken dialogue, or thoughts (though for ease of reading I recommend italics instead for those, or plain roman if the thought and its thinker are clear).
Single quotes are used only for quotes within quotes:
“The guy flat-out told me, ‘I didn’t do it!’” the witness said.
Please note that pretty little exclamation point snuggled inside the quotation mark—which brings up a few other punctuation/quotation rules when they play together. Strap in; this one’s going to get a little hairy.
Authors will often incorrectly tag on punctuation after quotes:
“I didn’t do it”, the man said.
Besides looking a bit untidy (as I think we can agree), this usage contradicts American and Chicago Manual style, which brings that little punctuation safely under the umbrella of the quotation mark:
“I didn’t do it,” the man said.
There are a couple of exceptions to this that may be what trips writers up. In compound sentences my much-beloved semicolon goes outside the quotes:
“I didn’t do it”; the man insisted on his innocence despite standing over the body in a pool of blood, holding a knife.
As does a colon. Like everything except the colon and semicolon (and sometimes the em dash, but sometimes not; we’ll deal with that conundrum shortly), a question mark or exclamation point usually goes inside the quotations, as do commas and periods–the latter of which go inside all of the quotation marks in the sentence all the time:
She wanted to trust him. “But I can’t believe him when he says, ‘I didn’t do it.’”
But if a question mark or exclamation point applies only to the material within a quote inside a longer sentence, then it goes outside the quotations:
Could she believe him when he said, “I didn’t do it”?
Now let’s get really flashy. Let’s say you have quotes within quotes, but the question mark (or exclamation) applies to the larger sentence of the quote, not the subquote, if you will. Then the question mark goes outside the single quotation for the subquote, but inside the double quotation for the full quote:
She wanted to trust him. “But can I believe him when he says, ‘I didn’t do it’?”
How are you liking them apples?
Now let’s talk about that little scamp the em dash where quotation marks are concerned. Straightforwardly, when they are used for interrupted or cut-off dialogue you can snuggle them right inside quotations like any other law-abiding comma or period:
“I can’t believe you—” The inspector cut him off with a slash of her hand.
Except…! This crazy renegade sometimes breaks free and lives outside of quotations, for instance when it’s not part of the quoted material:
He shouted out a denial—”I didn’t do it!”—but the jury was already adjourning.
Or (and this one may make your head explode) em dashes may live outside quotations when breaking up dialogue with “asides,” rather than using straight-up dialogue tags. For instance, with tags you might have something like:
The bailiff cuffed him as he continued to rail against judge, jury, and his accusers. “I’m innocent! Why won’t you listen?” he screamed the whole way out of the courtroom.
But if you don’t use them, it would look like this:
The bailiff cuffed him as he continued to rail against judge, jury, and his accusers—“I’m innocent! Why won’t you listen?”—the whole way out of the courtroom.
Authors, what are your most problematic punctuation principles and galling grammar gaffes? I’m having fun with these grammar posts, and if you’d like to see more of them on the mechanics of writing, let me know what issues trouble you most—or share your best hard-won tips for avoiding punctuation pitfalls.