1. Grammar Bootcamp
Other Punctuation
ENGL 124 B03 Winter 2010

2. Terminal Punctuation • Question marks follow a direct question
How many kinds of shark inhabit the Pacific?

3. Terminal Punctuation • Question marks follow a direct question
How many kinds of shark inhabit the Pacific?
INDIRECT QUESTIONS DO NOT INCLUDE QUESTION MARKS
He asked her how many kinds of shark inhabit the Pacific?
He asked her how many kinds of shark inhabit the Pacific.

4. Terminal Punctuation • Question marks follow a direct question
• Exclamation points replace a terminal period to
add emphasis
That’s a lot of sharks!

5. Terminal Punctuation • Question marks follow a direct question
• Exclamation points replace a terminal period to
add emphasis
• Terminal ellipses indicate incomplete speech acts
They said it was a shark attack, but I still wonder…

6. Terminal Punctuation • Question marks follow a direct question
• Exclamation points replace a terminal period to
add emphasis
• Terminal ellipses indicate incomplete speech acts
ELLIPSES MUST INCLUDE SPACES WHEN THEY
INDICATE AN OMISSION
According to Sophocles, “one word frees us of all the weight and pain of life.”
According to Sophocles, “one word frees us of all the … pain of life.”
According to Sophocles, “one word frees us of all the pain
of life.”

7. Colons • Can precede a list
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
– Benjamin Disraeli

8. Colons • Can precede a list • Precede a definition or explanation
Quotation: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
– Ambrose Bierce

9. Colons • Can precede a list • Precede a definition or explanation
• Can precede a direct quotation
There is a homely old adage which runs: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."
– Theodore Roosevelt

10. Apostrophes • Replace omitted letters or numerals in a contraction
does not doesn’t
they are they’re
it is it’s
let us let’s
madam ma’am
1793 ’93

11. Apostrophes • Replace omitted letters or numerals in a contraction
• Indicate a possessive
Smith, his book Smith’s book
potato potato’s color
potatoes potatoes’ color
the Smiths the Smiths’ house
Jones Jones’s book
the Joneses the Joneses’ house

12. Apostrophes • Replace omitted letters or numerals in a contraction
• Indicate a possessive
APOSTROPHES NEVER INDICATE PLURALS
apple’s apples
1970’s 1970s
the Smith’s the Smiths

13. Double Quotation Marks
• Indicate direct speech
He said, “I think that’s the one.”

14. Double Quotation Marks
• Indicate direct speech
• Indicate the title of a work which originally
appeared as part of a larger publication
Fitzgerald wrote “Babylon Revisited” as a kind of penance.

15. Double Quotation Marks
• Indicate direct speech
• Indicate the title of a work which originally
appeared as part of a larger publication
• Commas and periods always go inside quotation
marks; other punctuation marks go outside
“I think that’s the one,” he said. “I wish I could be sure.”
Fitzgerald wrote “Babylon Revisited”; he also lived “Babylon Revisited”!

16. Single Quotation Marks
• Indicate nested double quotation marks
“He said, ‘I think that’s the one,’” the witness replied.
She remarked, “Fitzgerald wrote ‘Babylon Revisited’ as a kind of penance.”

17. Single Quotation Marks
• Indicate nested double quotation marks
• Indicate that something is “so-called”
This ‘party’ of theirs isn’t much fun.

18. Single Quotation Marks
• Indicate nested double quotation marks
• Indicate that something is “so-called”
QUOTATION MARKS NEVER INDICATE EMPHASIS
Try our ‘fresh’ local fish
Check out our “sale” merchandise

19. Hyphens • Link together compound adjectives a nineteenth-century novel
the forty-second president
the out-of-date idea

20. Hyphens • Link together compound adjectives
a nineteenth-century novel
the forty-second president
the out-of-date idea
COMPOUND ADJECTIVES INCLUDING THE “-LY” ENDING DON’T TAKE A HYPHEN
the slowly rising tide
the carefully collected pieces

21. Hyphens • Link together compound adjectives
• Link together certain compound nouns
six-year-old
check-in
mother-in-law

22. Hyphens • Link together compound adjectives
• Link together certain compound nouns
• Certain prefixes take hyphens
anti-Catholic
pro-union
un-American
ex-husband

23. Italic/Underlining • Indicates foreign words or phrases (not yet
assimilated into English)
Freud’s analysis of the unheimlich in literature
not an artist per se

24. Italic/Underlining • Indicates foreign words or phrases (not yet
assimilated into English)
• Adds emphasis to a term
The mere sound is intolerable
By discourse, he means the set of all possible statements

25. Italic/Underlining • Indicates foreign words or phrases (not yet
assimilated into English)
• Adds emphasis to a term
• Indicates the title of a work originally published
as a single item
Milton’s Paradise Lost
The film Casablanca

26. Italic/Underlining • Indicates foreign words or phrases (not yet
assimilated into English)
• Adds emphasis to a term
• Indicates the title of a work originally published
as a single item
• Indicates the name of a ship, train or plane
the Titanic
the Enola Gay

27. Parentheses • Enclose subordinate material
Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put
competition above everything.
– Beniot Mandelbrot

28. Parentheses • Enclose subordinate material • Enclose in-text citations
He called this an “objective correlative” (Eliot 42).

29. Parentheses • Enclose subordinate material • Enclose in-text citations
• Enclose letters or numbers in a running list
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
– H. L. Mencken

30. Parentheses • Enclose subordinate material • Enclose in-text citations
• Enclose letters or numbers in a running list
NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH SQUARE BRACKETS, WHICH IDENTIFY MATERIAL INSERTED INTO A QUOTATION
About the capitalist states, it doesn't depend on you
whether we [the Soviet Union] exist.
– Nikita Khrushchev

31. Dashes • Can replace parentheses
There ought to be one day – just one – when there is
open season on senators.
– Will Rogers

32. Dashes • Can replace parentheses • Indicate a casual pause
People can have the Model T in any colour – so long as it's black.
– Henry Ford

33. Dashes • Can replace parentheses • Indicate a casual pause
• Can replace a colon
There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates,
and the glare that obscures.
– James Thurber

34. Dashes • Can replace parentheses • Indicate a casual pause
• Can replace a colon
DASHES SHOULD NOT FOLLOW COMMAS