Punctuation Acronyms?

I was going over the suggested material and was wondering if anybody has any mnemonic devices that I can use to remember the rules for punctuations?

Another Grammar Infraction

I was surfing the net the other day for something and caught this ad. I barely even noticed it. Interesting how much an apostrophe can throw everything off.

Below is a comic strip that I thought was pretty funny because I always have to ask myself that same question.

Restaurant Inspired Meals and Flash-Dry Technology

Here are some interesting (or maybe mundane) examples of proper and improper hyphen usage. There is a missing hyphen in "restaurant-inspired", as it is a compound adjective. Saying "restaurant, inspired meals" would not make any sense. Bad, bad Healthy Choice.




Here is a proper use of hyphens, as "leak-proof", "flash-dry", "quick-dry", and "drip-proof" are all compound adjectives. Good job, Hartz Training Academy.

Before I took this class, I never noticed these things. Thank you, Eng 408 for giving me “grammar vision”. :P

Reporting on Movies

At my internship this week I did interviews with some really incredible film makers and producers. When I was writing about the films I realized I did not know how what to do with the title of their movies. With essays you always put the title in quotation, Toni Morrison addresses the black woman's view on women's lib in her essay, "What the Black Woman thinks about Women's Lib." The title of a book is in italics. I am reading Toni Morrison's book, Tar Baby. But what do you do when you are referencing a movie or a documentary?

I will get back with you when I find out, or you can let me know if you find out first. In all the reviews, some capitalized the entire title, some italicised and some put the title in quotations. I am not sure what to do or who to follow?

Unique Baby Names??

I can't even begin to explain how I ended up on this web page, but I found a site that suggested ways to come up with unique names for your newborn (or to be born) children.

Unique punctuation - Create a totally unique name by making unusual use of punction such as the placing of an apostrophe, a hyphen or a middle Capital Letter.

Alternative Spellings - An easy way to create unique baby names. A good example is Ryann or Delyia.

First of all, does that really say 'punction'?

And second, there should be editing rules against this sort of baby naming.

knuckleheaded, hotheaded, ham-handed

I was interested in the occurrence of these words in the Asterisky Business article, specifically in their hyphenation.

The words appear in the following sentences:

In the fifth paragraph-
"...and then several more times in a ham-handed effort to get a roomful of sports reporters to retract or ignore his original use of the word."

And then in the second to last paragraph-
"I don't want Mr. McMackin punished for society's larger troubles any more than I want Prof. Henry Louis Gates or Sgt. James Crowley to bear sole racial responsibility for every inflexible cop or every hotheaded homeowner with an ego."

"And whether you believe it's the intolerance Crowley showed gates, or the intolerance Gates showed Crowley -- or the knuckleheaded intolerance Coach McMackin showed about lives different than his own -- it all gets you to the same place."

In each instance the word serves as an adjective, so why the difference in hyphenation? This is a good example of the evolution of words and how they change from two separate words, to hyphenated words, to a closed form. In the Merriam-Webster dictionary "ham-handed" and its derivatives are always hyphenated. "Knuckleheaded" is a closed compound.

Merriam-Webster lists "hotheaded" as a closed adjective but demonstrates its hyphenated use in the example: "He wrote a hot-headed letter." Dictionary.com lists both versions, "hotheaded" and "hot-headed." This leads me to believe that there is not yet a consensus on the form of this word, and it is an example of the in-between on an evolutionary scale. Because it appears in the same paragraph as "knuckleheaded" the un-hyphenated form is appealing.


I'm still developing my understanding of compound adjectives and when they should be hyphenated, so please comment or correct me!

Punctuation matters too!

Lisa L. posted about when to capitalize a word; and how the meaning of a word can change depending on whether or not a capital letter is used. The same can be said about punctuation. The meaning of a sentence can be drastically altered by the arrangement of the punctuation.


Written by Richard Lederer and John Shore, "Comma Sense - A FUNdamental Guide to Punctuation," relies on humor to teach the principles of punctuation.


“‘Writing well is important for business, but it also can be crucial in love,’ the writers warn. “Do you want to say, ‘I would like to tell you that I love you. I can’t stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on Earth,’ or ‘I would like to tell you that I love you. I can’t. Stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on Earth.’? As Lederer and Shore say, ‘Punctuation can mean the difference between a second date and a restraining order.”"

I recently wrote a short blog for HONOLULU magazine on-line. I was reporting on specials that the bars are having for football promotions. The Yard House was having specials on bloody mary, mimosa, and other cocktails. At first I capitalized them all. I was following the e-mail the manager had sent. Then I was not sure if they should or shouldn't be. I had to go ask the editor. She said it was not in their style to capitalize the names of drinks, even if it is their proper name. Made sense after, but I am glad I asked.

I always turn to the Grammar Girl for her Quick and Dirty Tips.
So here’s the Quick and Dirty Tip on random or vanity capitalization: don’t.

One reason capitalization matters is that a word’s meaning can change depending on whether it's uppercase or lowercase.

“See those three domiciles over there? Well, I live in the white house.” That’s quite different from, “I live in the White House [capital W, capital H].” That White House is where the president lives.

In English, we capitalize words that are proper nouns—that is, they describe a specific thing or entity. They could be a title, a name, or a specific place such as the president's residence: [THEE] White House.

We lowercase words that are considered common nouns—that is, they can be used to describe many things, such as any one of the multitude of white colored houses in the world.

(As an aside, I'll note that in German all nouns and certain pronouns get uppercased; now there's a gratuitous “Das Kapital” reference just waiting to be made. And so I made one.)

Parentheses Problem

Recently, I've been encountering a new way to format a parenthetical sentence. And I was following the book's explanation for this new structuring, till I found this (p. 76-77):

• Last year popular fiction accounted for half of all books purchased. (Business and self-help books were the second largest category.)

• Last year popular fiction accounted for half of all books purchased (business and self-help books were the second largest category).

From what I've read, it looks like the period would be on the inside of the parentheses if the sentence was "its own complete" sentence; otherwise, it would be outside. Yet, the only difference between the sentences is format, not content. Does this mean that the definition of "complete" sentences at some point becomes subjective and that subsequently the placement of parenthetical sentences also becomes subjective? Thanks :)

Still learning

I've never known how to properly use a semicolon. Hell, I don't even think I ever used one and I'm a English major. In the end, it took illustrations; I'm twenty-five.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

PS: I'm guessing the semicolons placement on the keyboard dates back to when people actually knew how to write.

Apostrophe's: Abused Mark's of Punctuation!

Those of you who read a lot of students' papers (say, if you're a peer writing tutor or something) or who just spend a lot of time on Facebook will likely run into a piece of composition that resembles this:

I did so many thing's today! First I had egg's and waffle's for breakfast, and then I gathered my book's and thing's for school. I found out I had to read several chapter's because my teacher's will have lot's of test's for us over the next few day's. Then my friend's met me after I ran some errand's, and we went to two different party's! I only had three drink's, but I still had my parent's pick me up. I would hate to crash into all those car's on the road's!

It is staggering to see how misued—nay, abused—the apostrophe has become. More and more commonly, the apostrophe is egregiously deployed to make plural nouns when, in fact, making a noun plural typically involves nothing more than adding the letter "s" to the noun sans the apostrophe.

Turning a singular noun into a plural noun? No problem. Just add an "s."

Granted, pluralizing a noun becomes just a tad trickier when the noun is supposed to undergo a bigger change, but whether you like it or not, still no apostrophe is needed. The example above, for instance, has party's, whose correct plural form is "parties." Ugh.

Okay, now that I've addressed simple plural nouns and their incompatibility with apostrophes, let's take a look at what apostrophes are actually meant for.

The first use of an apostrophe is to mark a noun—whether singular or plural—as possessive. Here are some examples:

When the noun is singular, the apostrophe is followed by an "s," as in
The cat's bowl or
Bruce's car or
The school's headmaster.

When the noun is already plural, the apostrophe follows the "s," as in
The books' covers or
His dogs' leashes.

The second use of an apostrophe is to indicate omitted letters in contractions. Here are some examples:

Don't = Do not
Won't = Will not
Shouldn't = Should not
It's = It is
They're = They are

On a related note, occasionally apostrophes are used to omit letters in informal writings, such as when the writer is attempting to reflect the idiosyncrasies of slang or a regional dialect, as in
I'll be gettin' there soon! or
He's just killin' time and chillin'.

And that's it: the two main uses of the apostrophe in the English language. Unless you're using the apostrophe for one of these two purposes, please leave the poor thing alone.

Question about "decrees, suits and countersuits"

Pat,

I read this sentence a little differently - I read it as if "depositions and decrees" were opposed and "suits and countersuits" were opposed. A similar example might be "the ins and outs, rights and wrongs, of the situation." If they were meant to be coupled like that, would the punctuation have been right as it was?

Comma Chameleon

Here are the first few sentences of an article by writer Mike Todd in which he describes his epic struggles with the mighty comma. Click on the post title to see the rest of the piece.

Did you know that the correct punctuation differs between the phrases “my cousin Rachel” and “my wife Kara”? An astute reader recently pointed out that the phrase “my wife Kara,” which readers of this column (including, and sometimes limited to, my mom) might recognize as appearing in this space with the same frequency that severed limbs appear in Quentin Tarantino movies, really requires a comma between the words “wife” and “Kara.”

After several salvos in a grammatical battle that could only be described as epic (by me) or unbelievably dorky (by Kara), my defeat became impossible to ignore…

Test 3

(from Moon-Yun)

For some parts of the test, I felt like the copyeditor would have looked up the answers on a stylebook and not necessarily have the answer in his/her head, such as with the punctuation question. Would that be true?

Book questions

1. In a discussion of "that" and "which," the book throws out a term I don't believe we've learned; if we have, I apologize, but what is an elliptical sentence?

2. The examples our book gives on misplaced modifers seem to me, also "missing subjects." For example, the book states: "1. Watching from the wings, the orchestra played the overture." The explaination the book gives is that "Someone or something other than the orchestra is watching; it could be a soprano or a murderer [aren't the writers bright and cheery?]. Query the author unless you are certain from context you can supply the correct noun or pronoun" (134). I guess my question is, can misplaced modifers be called missing subjects?

3. The book states, "Unless the sentence is extremely short, use a comma between two independent or main clauses...joined by and" (142). I'm wondering is this "extremely" short sentence a judgement call?

4. The book does this "extremely short" business again with introductory clauses and phrases. "Unlesss the introductory phrase is very short, a comma is necessary to indicate the pause in thought" (144). Again, is this a judgement call?

5. Colons! The book gives an example of a colon used to "add" or "supplement" to a sentence. I don't believe I've seen this often in writing. I think the em-dash is more often used. Am I wrong? The example the book gives is this: ""Only one course was open to the present: to fire the secretary" (147). This seems odd to me; I'm sure it's correct, but I was wondering if this is common for a colon. Ha..ahhh..okay.

Puncuating abbreviations

I always get confused about how to puncuate a sentence that ends with an abbreviation.

For example: "We will have dinner at 8 p.m.(.)" Is there a need for a period or does the second period in p.m. act as the puncuation?

Same goes for "Do you work at the U.N.?" Is this over-puncuating?

This is a little similar to our class discussion about how to puncuate the sentence "Do you Yahoo!?"

Trademarks and bullet-points.

I have two questions today. One may have already been answered in the past, but I couldn't find it.

The first question deals with adding a period at the end of a bullet-point topic. In Test 1 and 2, we were supposed to add a period after the subject of each topic, such as Anthologies or Litblogs. Why do we add a period after the topics? A lot of teachers in various departments always discouraged one-word sentences, or two-word sentences. Wouldn't a colon, or semi-colon be more effective in these cases since the author is trying to describe or define the topic?

My second question deals with trademarks. When do we, as copyeditors, put in the trademark logo when we come across a brand-name that's being used in the manuscript? Do we have to wait for certain copyrights to be handed over, or are we allowed to leave it as it is?

Do You Yahoo!?

Colons and Caps

Is there a rule for capitalizing the first word after a colon? I see this around sometimes, for example in our text book on p. 161. At my internship last summer, if I used a colon, my boss would always edit the sentence to capitalize the first word after the colon. Is this correct? When is this appropriate?