Don't Get Punk'd by Common Punctuation Troublemakers

 

by Fran Hodgkins

 If you’re like most people, your reaction of punctuation questions is either to utter a polite “ugh!” or to run screaming from the room. If you’re not like most people, though, you’re celebrating the upcoming release of the Chicago Manual of Style, 18^th edition, and feeling a bit giddy with excitement.

Alas, I fall into the second group. My family doesn’t talk about me much.  

Seriously, though, while some of us love it, for many people punctuation is a necessary evil. However, if poorly used, it can stop an editor from finishing your manuscript. Some people will take exception to that statement, saying that a good idea will find a home, no matter how poorly punctuated or grimly ungrammatical.

To which I reply: why take the chance? With publishers getting literally thousands of submissions, don’t you want to give your manuscript the best chance? You may have a purebred Golden Retriever in the dog show but should at least bathe him before he greets the judges.

So, here’s a refresher course on punctuation marks.

The period, or full stop. This dot ends a sentence. That’s its whole job. Its reason for existence. You express a complete thought, and then, boom – end with a period. Problem is, some people get a bit carried away and forget the period. They create a run-on sentence, which is two complete thoughts connected by nothing but good wishes.

I took my dog to the park my car broke down on the way.

Two things are going on: taking the dog to the part and the car breaking down. Something’s missing. A connection (such as a coordinate conjunction, like “but”), or a stop sign – a period.

I took my dog to the park. My car broke down on the way.

Periods can easily be overlooked. Folks of a Certain Age or who have old keyboards may hit the comma when they want the period. MS Word has a new quirk where it will insert periods when you don’t want them. Be wary when proofreading!

Quotation marks. These are the friendly little curly guys who tell readers when someone it talking. They always come in pairs: “ at the beginning and ” at the end. They seem innocent enough, but when end punctuation gets involved, quotation marks can be difficult to control.

In the United States, the rule is that when the period, exclamation mark, or question mark goes with the dialog, it goes “inside” the quotation mark:

She cried, “Stop, thief!”

The postal worker asked, “Did you pick up your package?”

David said, “I’ll be there eventually.”

That’s straightforward and easy to remember. But when the end punctuation does not go with the spoken words, but is actually part of the larger statement, things can get messy:

Did you hear David say, “I won’t be there after all”?

David had the nerve to say, “I won’t be there after all”!

 

A related trickster is the single quotation mark. It is used to enclose a quote within a quote. For example, David said, “I’ll be ‘sick’ and unable to attend.” Easy enough, right? But let’s move those little stinkers to the end of the sentence:

She said, “David was unable to attend because he was ‘sick’!”

There’s a lot of punctuating going on at the end of that sentence: single quote, word, single quote, exclamation point, and closing double quotes – whew!

 

Let’s wrap up with one of the most often abused punctuation marks: the apostrophe. I have heard this mark called the “Flying Comma” and I approve.

The apostrophe forms contractions. It takes the place of dropped letters, as in isn’t, let’s, don’t.

It can also form some possessives, but not all possessives use an apostrophe.

 

Wait, say that again.

 

The basic pattern is like this:

cat (singular)   cat’s (possessive)   cats (plural)   cats’ (plural possessive)

 

 

Here’s a helpful list:

Apostrophe                                                          No apostrophe

boy’s (possessive)                                           his (possessive)

girls’ (plural possessive)                                  their (plural possessive)

building’s (possessive)                                    buildings (plural)

it’s (contraction)                                               its (possessive)

 

One job that apostrophes don’t do is to form plurals.

 

 

Are you going to turn in a perfect manuscript? Alas, no—and nor should you expect to. We are not machines, so somewhere in every manuscript lurks a misplaced apostrophe or an overactive comma. We do the best we can with the tools at hand, and still our editors and copy editors find things. That’s OK (it’s their job, anyway!). Spotting and fixing these common errors can never hurt your manuscript’s changes.

And may the odds be ever in your favor!