Transcript Art of Editing workshop 3 Perfect Punctuation September

THE ART OF EDITING 3
PERFECT PUNCTUATION
Editing seminar series for HDR candidates and advisors 2014
Dr Liz Tynan
Senior Lecturer and Co-ordinator Research Student Academic Support
JCU Graduate Research School
A guiding thought
• My attitude toward punctuation is
that it ought to be as conventional
as possible. The game of golf
would lose a good deal if croquet
mallets and billiard cues were
allowed on the putting green. You
ought to be able to show that you
can do it a good deal better than
anyone else with the regular tools
before you have a license to bring
in your own improvements.
Ernest Hemingway, American author
Punctuation for pleasure
• Read Lynne Truss’s
book to get a buzz out
of punctuation.
• Her book is the world’s
first and only
punctuation bestseller.
Above average punctuation?
• Perfect punctuation is not possible – sorry
that I misled you.
• Maybe aim for above average.
• While complete technical correctness is a
nice goal to have, none of us ever really
achieve it.
• Punctuation does have grey areas.
Apostrophes
• To indicate contraction: It’s [It is] a pity that
people don’t [do not] care about apostrophes.
• To show possession (in nouns, not pronouns):
The editor’s lament for singular; The editors’
lament for plural.
A pair of problems
• The most common pair of errors is to
leave out an apostrophe where it is
needed but put one in where it isn’t.
Greengrocers carry the can
• Although they are not
the only ones who
chronically misuse
apostrophes,
greengrocers take most
of the blame.
• The famous
greengrocers’
apostrophe is named in
their honour.
Enough to turn you off fruit
• Apple’s, pear’s, avocado’s
The iron rule
• Simple plurals never need an apostrophe.
• Look at a word and see whether it is a
contraction or a possessive and then apply
the apostrophe accordingly.
• If the word is neither of these things, do not
use an apostrophe.
More sorrow than anger
• From the BBC website:
• Next week: Nouns and apostrophe’s
Ending with a vowel
• These incorrect usages are common:
Nacho’s, taco’s
• Be brave – go apostrophe-less in these
cases:
Nachos, tacos
Absence does not make…
• The childrens playground
• The babies bibs
• The cats whiskers
Edit for correctness
• The children’s playground
• The baby’s bibs/The babies’ bibs
• The cat’s whiskers/The cats’ whiskers
• Note that in their original, unpunctuated, form it is
not always possible to determine whether what is
being referred to is singular or plural.
• Correctly applied apostrophes will tell you.
Note singular and plural
• “Two years’ jail.”
• “One week’s notice.”
• Take note of the difference in plural and
singular here.
Intrinsic plurality
• Words that are in themselves plural, such as
children, women and men, do not need the
extra boosted plurality of an s-apostrophe (s’).
• This means that they are written:
• Children’s clothes
• Women’s books
• Men’s bags
Names ending in “s”
• “Alan Jones’ head”
• Or should it be:
• “Alan Jones’s head”
• This is more a style issue than a correctness
issue. A book called Pythagoras’ Trousers
eschewed the extra “s”, but just as often you
will see Pythagoras’s Theorem, or Keats’s
poem or Achilles’s heel.
• Choose your favoured style and stick with it.
Other style issues
• Modern Australian style dictates that you do
not use an apostrophe in the 1970s or to show
the plural of acronyms such as QCs or MPs.
• Here, just a lower case “s” is sufficient – it
keeps it simple and elegant.
• If you are writing, for example, the ’70s, you do
need to show the omission of the first part of
the year.
Confusion with adjectives
• “Melbourne citizens”
• “Melbourne’s citizens”
• The first is the adjectival form and the
second possessive.
• Sometimes the adjectival form is more
graceful than the possessive form.
Painful for the pedant
• Persistent usage has meant that some place
names don’t have apostrophes even when,
strictly speaking, they should:
• Wilsons Promontory
• St Andrews
• Badgerys Creeks
Possessive pronouns
• Possessive pronouns such as its, his, hers, ours,
theirs, yours have a different rule to nouns.
• These words never have an apostrophe.
• For example: “The cat chased its tail.”
• The possessive pronoun its does not require an
apostrophe.
• When you see the word its ask yourself if it is a
contraction, in which case it must have an
apostrophe, or whether it is simply possessive, in
which case there is no apostrophe.
Lapsing into a comma
• There is perhaps more
reason for confusion
over commas than there
is over apostrophes.
• The rules for
apostrophes are clearcut, but the rules for
commas are not.
Principles of comma use
• Commas are used to separate ideas in a
sentence and to otherwise make
meaning clear.
• They are intended to provide natural
pauses within a sentence, to regulate the
rhythm of the sentence in ways that
assist meaning.
Useful for spoken scripts
• Good comma use is helpful for spoken
scripts.
• They assist the person delivering the
speech or paper to follow the sense of
the prose, while speaking to an audience
or into a recording device.
Commas on the decline
• The trend in standard Australian English is
to cut down on the use of commas where
possible.
• Keep in mind that commas can change the
meaning of a sentence:
• The researchers, who liked to talk, were
appointed to the committee.
• The researchers who liked to talk were
appointed to the committee.
Benny Hill punctuation
• What is this thing called love?
• What is this thing called, love?
A few simple rules: 1
To avoid ambiguity:
• “Over time, travel has become more affordable.”
• Without a comma here, ambiguity may arise
over joining “time” and “travel” together.
A few simple rules: 2
Between adjectives before a noun:
• A large, black van.
• Note that the use of commas here is only when
the adjectives modify the noun separately.
• If the modifying adjectives are working more
closely together, such as “The grand old duke of
York”, a comma is not required.
A few simple rules: 3
In a list to separate the elements:
• The basic stages of writing an article are:
outlining, researching, drafting, checking and
confirming facts, redrafting and editing.
A few simple rules: 4
To distinguish parenthetical words and
phrases:
• My view, therefore, is that editors should always
be consistent.
Parenthetical commas
• Pay special attention to the point about
parenthetical words and phrases.
• Commas must always be used in pairs in this
case. You cannot open such a phrase with a
comma and not close it.
• In “My view, therefore, is that editors should
always be consistent”, to not place the second
comma after the word “therefore” would be
grammatically incorrect.
Check if you need a pair of commas
• See if the word or phrase could be taken out without
damaging the grammatical integrity of the sentence.
• If it can be taken out, then you must use two commas
around it. For example:
• “The woman, who was increasingly impatient, waited in
line.”
Incorrect:
• “The woman who was increasingly impatient, waited in line.”
• And
• “The woman, who was increasingly impatient waited in line.”
No comma between S and V
• Do not let a comma stand between a
grammatical subject and its verb:
• “A grammatical subject links strongly to its verb.”
Do not write:
• “A grammatical subject, links strongly to its verb.”
Small complication
• The exception is when you are inserting a descriptive
phrase, like the one we looked at before:
• The woman, who was increasingly impatient, waited in line.
• You will see that the grammatical subject, the woman
does have a comma after it, and it takes a while to get
to the verb, waited.
• The commas enclose a parenthetical phrase that
could be taken out, commas and all, without
disrupting the grammar of the sentence.
Watch for a grammatical trap
• Another problem arises with the correct
placement of a phrase and its attendant
commas. For example, this is incorrect:
• If a person is, or is entitled to be registered, as
the holder of shares…
• The correct way to punctuate is:
• If a person is, or is entitled to be, registered as
the holder of shares…
• Remove the phrase and see what happens to
the grammar.
Commas between clauses?
• If the clauses are co-ordinating and joined by
“and”, you don’t use a comma. For example:
• Rosa sent in her application and waited by the
phone for a response.
• If, however, you are using a subordinate clause
then use a comma. For example:
• Rosa sent in her application, hoping for the best.
The Oxford comma
• A simple example of the Oxford
comma might be:
• The flag was red, white, and blue.
OR
• Content words include nouns, verbs,
pronouns, adverbs, and adjectives.
• I don’t use the Oxford comma myself –
I don’t believe it is necessary.
However, this is a style issue.
Commas after intro phrases
• Adjunct words or phrases at the start of sentences should have a
comma between them and the main part of the sentence:
• Similarly,
• On the other hand,
• In conclusion,
• Therefore,
• In fact,
• That is,
• More importantly,
• Namely,
• Of course,
• Furthermore,
• Put simply,
A semi-colon thought
• Sometimes you get a glimpse
of a semicolon coming, a few
lines farther on, and it is like
climbing a steep path through
woods and seeing a wooden
bench just at a bend in the
road ahead, a place where you
can expect to sit for a moment,
catching your breath.
American physician and writer Lewis Thomas
A useful function
• The semi-colon joins clauses in a complex sentence,
when it may be used to substitute for a conjunction.
• That is one of its main functions, along with separating
elements of a list.
• This punctuation mark is not interchangeable with the
comma.
• Here is an example of it being used to stand in for a
conjunction:
• Mary Shelley’s works are entertaining; they are full of
engaging ideas.
A related function
• A semi-colon may also be used as a way of
separating two thoughts in a compound sentence:
• They failed to convince the jury; however, the judge
issued a suspended sentence.
• Another way of expressing this information would
be in two separate sentences.
• However, wanting the two facts to be placed
together is completely legitimate as is indicating a
slight pause between them.
• Use a semi-colon, not a comma.
Colons
• A colon informs the reader that what follows proves
and explains, or simply provides elements of, what is
referred to before:
• The squalor of the streets reminded her of a line from
Oscar Wilde: ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us
are looking at the stars’.
• Another example:
• The system is designed to be fool-proof: a user
cannot access the system without three different user
names and five passwords.
According to Fowler…
• H W Fowler, author of the
enduring classic
Dictionary of Modern
English Usage, said the
colon delivers the goods
that have been invoiced in
the preceding words.
Cutting a dash
• A dash is less formal than a semi-colon but it is
often used in its place.
• Dashes suggest a less firm connection between
the parts of the sentence than semi-colons.
• A dash is fine for informal communication – I
use it all the time – but is frowned on in
academic work.
Quotation marks: style
• Consistency is important.
• If you are going to stick with, say, single quotation marks
throughout your paper then make sure that is what you
always use.
• Familiarise yourself with journal style guides. Some insist on
single quote marks, others on double. For example:
• She said, “I think Lynne Truss is right when she says ‘It’s
tough being a stickler for punctuation these days’.”
• If you were writing this in a book, it is likely that it would be
written like this:
• She said, ‘I think Lynne Truss is right when she says “It’s
tough being a stickler for punctuation these days”.’
Direct quote punctuation
• This is the usual pattern (as used by the media):
• “The research so far is showing promising results,”
Professor Carol Smith said.
• “We plan to begin a new trial next year,” she said.
• “We hope to have a new treatment on the market by 2015.”
Within an academic paper:
• The strategic plan will have to encompass “systems of
quality management targeted at the consumer” (Brown 44).
Running quotes
• “I’m really baffled by the accusations,” he
said. “In fact I can’t see what all the fuss is
about.
• “I really don’t know what to do about the
terrible mess I seem to be in.”
Go forth and punctuate
• Punctuation herds
words together, keeps
others apart.
Punctuation directs
you how to read, in
the way musical
notation directs a
musician how to play.
Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves