Good afternoon all! It seems like forever since we shared a special candle-lit moment discussing punctuation or vocabulary. Rather than ease back into it, I’m ripping off the Band-Aid and continuing where we left off—with more quotation mark rules. These are the remaining rules from www.grammarbook.com, with examples from yours truly.

Rule 4: Use single quotation marks for quotes within quotes. Note that the period goes inside all quote marks.

Example:
Bonnie said, "Joy told Alexander, ‘You can’t treat me that way.’” (KC – Yes, the single quotes go within the double quotes, which means you’re including the three quote marks after the period.)

Rule 5: Use quotation marks to set off a direct quotation only.

Examples:
"Will you be coming to my bachelor party?" he asked.

He asked if you would be at his bachelor party.

“Are you allergic to hedgehogs?” Mary asked.

Mary wanted to know if you are allergic to hedgehogs.

Rule 6: Do not use quotation marks with quoted material that is more than three lines in length. (KC – There are different ways to handle this. Generally I indent longer quotations.)

Rule 7: When you are quoting something that has a spelling or grammar mistake or presents material in a confusing way, insert the term sic in italics and enclose it in brackets. Sic means, "This is the way the original material was."

Example:
Mickey Junior wrote, "My grandpa is my favorite pursun [sic] in the world."

And now for something completely different:

A man’s wife was in labor with their first child and suddenly she began to shout, “Shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t, can’t!” He asked the nurse what was wrong with her. The nurse said, “She’s having contractions.” – Garrison Keillor

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No time for punctuation today, and tomorrow I have jury duty, so you’ll just have to hold any unanswered questions you have about quotation marks for another day. Here are ten terms that are synonyms for law, order, or rule, from DailyWritingTips.com. There’s a chance I might’ve added a few comments here and there.

· Behest: an order or prompting

· Commandment: something ordered

· Decree: an order, or a decision by a judicial or religious official

· Directive: an order issued by a government entity, an official, an organization, or Starfleet

· Edict: an order or proclamation

· Injunction: an order, or a legal requirement to do or not do something (not to be confused with a conjunction, the part of speech that is used to combine two or more words, clauses, or sentences)

· Mandate: an order handed down from one court or other judicial body to another, or an authorization granted to a government official or a government, an order for establishment of a government, or a territory under such an order (and rarely, a term referring to several guys hanging out together, usually in a “man cave”)

· Ordinance: a law or order established by a government entity, especially on the municipal level, a specified ceremony or custom, or something ordered by a god or determined by fate

· Precept: an order given to an official by the person’s superior, or an order or a principle that is to be considered a general rule

· Word: a direction or order (Sometimes used as an interjection [Word!] to indicate agreement.)

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Okay, no more messing around—the weekend is over and it’s time to get back to business! Today’s topic (and tomorrow’s) is quotation marks. Hopefully, these rules and examples will address the questions that arose during our discussion of the power-packed period and its use with other punctuation.

These rules are courtesy of The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation (www.grammarbook.com); the examples are my gifts to you.

Quotation Marks

Rule 1: Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks, even inside single quotes. [KC – These are the American English rules; British English rules keep the punctuation outside of the quote marks.]

Examples:

· The display changed from "Welcome," to "Access Denied," to "Welcome" again within 30 seconds.

· He said, "We don’t need to bring a flashlight."

· She said, "He told me that I should say, ‘On, Bojangles!’ when I want the horse to move forward.” [KC – Note single quotes for the quotation within the standard (double) quotes.]

Rule 2: The placement of question marks with quotes follows logic. If a question is in quotation marks, the question mark should be placed inside the quotation marks.

Examples:

· Grandpa asked, "Can you please bring five pounds of bacon with you?"

· Are you familiar with the phrase, "As cross as a frog in a sock"?

Note: Only one ending punctuation mark is used with quotation marks. Also, the stronger punctuation mark wins. Therefore, no period after sock is used. [KC – Punctuation “strength” is another topic completely.]

Rule 3: When you have a question outside quoted material AND inside quoted material, use only one question mark and place it inside the quotation mark.

Example:

· Did Pepper say, "Are you kidding me?"

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

I want to thank everyone who recently signed up for Editor’s Corner, and all of you who recommended it to your coworkers. In particular, I’d like to thank the winner of the Starbucks card: Tomya Fason. Tomya brings 21 new readers to the “club.” Coming up a close second with 18 submissions is Peggy Esch. In the days from January 2 to January 9, we have gone from 505 subscribers to 685.

Please feel free to have people e-mail me (kchurch) any time of year to be added to the list! Remember, they can get a taste at https://episystechpubs.com/ before making such a serious commitment. 🙂

I know I owe you some more answers about punctuation and quotation marks, but it is Friday, my dog got skunked, and I think we need something more relaxing. The following article is from the Common Errors in English Usage website (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html).

CONFIDENT/CONFIDANT/CONFIDANTE

In modern English “confident” is almost always an adjective. Having studied for a test you feel confident about passing it. You’re in a confident frame of mind. This spelling is often misused as a noun meaning “person you confide in,” especially in the misspelled phrase “close confident.”

The spelling “confidante” suggests that such a close friend might be a female, and conservatives prefer to confine its use to refer to women. But this spelling is also very common for males, and the spelling “confidant” is also used for both males and females. Either one will do in most contexts, but the person you trust with your deep secrets is not your “confident.”

The incorrect, seldom-used apostrophe “e” from a family of semi-literate goats:

Have a good weekend!

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Good afternoon! Don’t forget, today is the last day to get points for encouraging people to sign up for the Editor’s Corner. You can recommend it any time of the year, but today your points go towards a $20 Starbucks card that is burning a hole in my pocket!

I received a lot of questions yesterday about punctuation combinations at the end of sentences. Most of them revolved around parentheses and quotation marks, so let’s tackle parentheses today.

Some of the questions:

· When a sentence has a parenthetical phrase at the end, does the end punctuation go inside or outside the parentheses?

· If a sentence ends with a question in parentheses, do you put the question mark inside the parentheses and end with the closing parentheses? Or do you put a period after that? For example: (right?).

Parentheses

The rules from grammarbook.com; the definition and examples are from The Chicago Manual of Style and from me.

Definition: Parentheses are used to set off material from the surrounding text.

Rule 1: Use parentheses to enclose words or figures that clarify or are used as an aside.

· He suspected that the noble gases (helium, neon, etc.) could produce a similar effect.

· Wexford’s analysis (see chapter 3) is more to the point.

Rule 2: Use full parentheses to enclose numbers or letters used for listed items.

· Myrtle dumped Duncan because as a boyfriend he was (1) selfish, (2) a messy eater, and (3) he liked sleeping with his pet boa.

Rule 3: Periods go inside parentheses only if an entire sentence is inside the parentheses.

· Five new watches were on display. (Shellahan coveted the battery-powered quartz model.)

Additional Examples:

· Intelligence tests (e.g., the Stanford-Binet) are no longer widely used.

· Come on in (quietly, please!) and take a seat.

· On display were the watchmakers’ five latest creations (all of which Shellahan coveted).

Final Word:

Sometimes it’s best just to rewrite the sentence a different way to get around crazy punctuation.

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together with any attachment, may contain confidential and/or privileged information.
Any unauthorized review, use, printing, saving, copying, disclosure or distribution
is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
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Little did I know that yesterday’s topic of (one) space after a period would cause such an uproar! I received countless e-mails from readers. Some folks were thankful and said they’d try to switch to one space; others were adamant about using two spaces “I’ll give up placing two spaces after sentences when they pry my mouse from my cold dead hands!” And one person asked if we could design a 12-step program to help ease the pain of letting the extra space go.

Considering all of that, I’m taking a step back to a (hopefully) safer punctuation mark: the period. Child’s play, you say? Well, I’m here to tell you that some people just don’t like ending their sentences and they habitually leave the period off. Others aren’t sure if they should put an extra period when the sentence ends with an abbreviation. Here are three simple rules to help you (rules from grammarbook.com; examples mine):

· Rule 1: Use a period at the end of a complete sentence that is a statement.

Example: I made a new sweater for my dog.

Photo from www.lionbrand.com

· Rule 2: If the last word in the sentence ends in a period, do not follow it with another period.

Examples:

o After ten years, Jodi earned her Ph.D. We threw a party for her on June 30.

o I added ginger, mint, fish sauce, etc.

· Rule 3: Use the period after an indirect question.

Example: She asked where we kept the butter.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Okay, enough with the fun and games; today I have a couple rules for you on spacing with punctuation. This is probably familiar to most of you, but I still see two spaces after periods in some of the things I edit.

Rule 1: If you learned to type on a typewriter rather than a computer keyboard, it is time to give up the two spaces after punctuation. I know, it can be tough—you press that spacebar twice like you have a nervous tic. Now it’s time to tame your reflexes and press it only once. Despite what you might’ve learned as a young ‘un, in our world of Word, you only need one space after the following punctuation marks:

· periods

· commas

· semicolons

· colons

· exclamation points

· question marks

· quotation marks

Rule 2: Do not use spaces on either side of a hyphen. (We’ll save other types of dashes for another day.) For example, “My house was built eighty-eight years ago.”

Go forth and prosper!

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

A few months ago, we talked about mondegreens. Mondegreens are misheard or misunderstood phrases, usually in poems or song lyrics. The term is from the song lyrics "And laid him on the green” misheard as “Lady Mondegreen.”

Today I have a similar term for you: oronym. Some say that it is the same as a mondegreen, though other sources say it refers to sentences that can sound the same when read aloud, but contain different words. Here are some examples of oronyms from wordinfo.info:

The stuffy nose can lead to problems.
The stuff he knows can lead to problems.

Are you aware of the words you have just uttered?
Are you aware of the word you have just stuttered?

That’s the biggest hurdle I’ve ever seen.
That’s the biggest turtle I’ve ever seen.

I’m taking a nice cold shower.
I’m taking an ice cold shower.

Reading in the library is sometimes allowed.
Reading in the library is sometimes aloud.

The boy saw some grey pants.
The boy saw some grape ants.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Comic from themetapicture.com

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Thursday is quiz day…but some of us are still easing back into things after the holidays. To make it easy on everyone today, we’ll skip the quiz, and instead, I have some information on mixed metaphors. From The Grammar Devotional, by Mignon Fogarty:

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee on the Wall: Mixed Metaphors

A metaphor is when you use something familiar to explain something else. Sports metaphors tend to be popular, and they’re also easy to mix. A sports metaphor is something like telling your employees It’s our turn at bat when it’s time to give a presentation. You’re comparing work to baseball. But be careful: if you said, “It’s our turn at bat, so let’s make a touchdown for the company,” you’d have mixed baseball and football metaphors, and your employees wouldn’t know whether to put themselves on a metaphorical baseball field or football field.

And now for some mixed metaphors that will hopefully give you a chuckle. These are from a collection at therussler.tripod.com:

· A rolling stone is worth two in the bush.

· Adam wasn’t always the brightest tool.

· Biting the hand that rocks the cradle…

· Can’t you read the handwriting in the wind?

· Dirty laundry is coming home to roost.

· He came out of it smelling like a bandit.

· He’s not the sharpest marble in the drawer.

· I could beat him with my eyes tied behind my back.

· I could see you itching at the bit.

· I’d walk a mile in a camel’s shoes to pass through the eye of a needle.

· I’ve got an ace up my nose.

· Ignorance is golden.

I hope you have a great day!

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Happy New Year!

I am pleased to welcome everyone back and to thank all of you new subscribers to Editor’s Corner! We’re off to a great start.

The other day we had a look at some of 2012’s most overused terms, but I have to say that this list from The Atlantic Wire (www.theatlanticwire.com) is a bit more entertaining. I’ve selected a few items from what their contributors call “An A-to-Z Guide to 2012’s Worst Words.”

Note: Most of my commentary is in blue, often marked with a KC (my initials, not Kentucky Chicken or Karaoke Cafe). Information from outside resources is labeled, contains a reference, and I generally keep it in black font.

· Baby Bump. Horrid compound noun. [This term…] manages to be both infantilizing and depersonalizing to both baby bump and baby carrier. It’s not a bump; that human woman is pregnant.

· Epic. Adjective. Unless you’re describing The Iliad or The Odyssey (and in a high school or college English class), choose anew, friends. Don’t make me say this again in 2013.

· Fiscal Cliff. Noun. Our Dashiell Bennett says, "The fiscal cliff is the worst kind of jargon because it’s both inaccurate and unhelpful. America’s economy won’t suddenly plummet to the bottom of a crevasse on January 1, and even if it were going to, an imaginary rock formation doesn’t teach anyone about how budgets are made. [KC – This gets my vote. I think I’ll stick with Netflix so I don’t have to hear it anymore.]

· Hehehe. The way a serial killer chuckles. This is a particular spelling of laughter which I personally cannot stand, mostly because it is so very creepy.

· Meggings. Noun. These are "men’s tights" and worse than men wearing tights (let ’em wear what they like, we say!) is the horrifying proliferation of the word meggings to describe tights worn by men. One small up-side is that meggings make jeggings sound rather lovely, actually. [KC – I’m all for men in tights!]

· Ping. Verb.Gizmodo’s Sam Biddle despises this word, saying "I hate ping because it means the exact same thing as contact. There’s no difference between ping and contact. But when we say ping, we can pretend like we’re in a scene from The Social Network, when in fact we’re just regular idiots like everyone else. It’s also too ambiguous—if someone asks me to ping them, do I text, call, ring a bell in their face? I hate ambiguity in language." Do not ping me. Do not dare.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor