Punctuation Traps and Tips

Hello, Friends,

It's an addiction: I notice grammar and punctuation errors! Of course, not all errors are created equal, and some get more attention than they deserve. Here are suggestions to manage some of the most noticed issues:

1. With a greeting, like mine above, put a comma before and after the recipient's name.

2. In the US and Canada, place periods and commas inside the quotation marks—always!

3. Use semicolons only between complete statements that form a sentence (think of them as soft periods): "I like coffee; she prefers tea." Here is one other use: to separate sets in a list: name, age, rank; name, age, rank; name, age, rank. Of course this information might work better in a table.

4. Do not use apostrophes with family names on mailboxes or holiday greetings. It's the Smith Family or the Smiths, but never the Smith's. The apostrophe makes it look possessive when it is not. It could also be the Smiths' home or John and Mary Smith's home.

5. Unless you are writing for publication, use the serial comma. More often than you would think, leaving it out leads to confusion—and all the grammar books advise its use. Here's an example from The Gregg Reference Manual: "The job involves restocking shelves, cleaning and serving customers." Even the Associated Press Stylebook acknowledges that there are occasions where the serial comma avoids ambiguity—like in the example above.

6. A Shocker: Use only one space between sentences or after colons. Why? Of necessity, the traditional typewriter used the Courier font, allotting equal space to each letter so we could correct our mistakes, like replacing an i with a w. This spacing resulted in so much space between some letters that two spaces seemed necessary between sentences. Now, with proportional spacing, more than one space between sentences looks excessive:

Courier 12: www iii.  Here, I'd use two spaces between sentences.  You can see why!

Times 12: www iii.   Here, I'd use one space between sentences. You can see why.

Finally, don't believe anything I said just because I said so. Look it up in any contemporary style book, examine any printed item, or, for the last one, ask a grade school child.

I hope some of these tips are useful. I plan to continue sharing grammar and punctuation issues that intrigue and distract me.

Thanks for reading, and keep on punctuating!

Neita

Introducing WordSense: Grammar, Punctuation, and Writing Tips and Traps

Hi, my first post!

I plan to create blogs about grammar, punctuation, word use, and a variety of aspects of plain English and writing. Although
I am not a writer, I greatly enjoy shaping other folks' documents and maintaining a sharp watch for any errors that I notice—in documents, on signs, in PowerPoint presentations, and in books I read for pleasure. Here's what I mean: Just yesterday, I received an email acknowledging, “Your right!” It would have been fun to reply, “Oh, not my left?” but apart from feeling clever, what would be the point?

Wouldn't I just love to collar someone and correct such use of language! However, I don't want to lose friends and annoy people. Happily, I have found that when folks pay me, they welcome feedback. And from the safety and distance of a blog, I believe I can offer insights and even correct public errors!

For my dissertation, my interest in errors and perceived errors led me to survey 400 individuals in five professional groups on their responses to 100 sentences—whether they saw anything in each sentence that bothered them, from “Bothers me a lot” to “Does not bother me at all.” That was 1984, and the responses ran the gamut. In 2010, I find that essentially all the issues of grammar, usage, and punctuation that bothered folks then still do. Here is my conclusion: “Not all errors are created equal,” an insight that will inform my comments about the issues I address in my blogs.