Punctuation, Part 2

In this post, I'll focus on some other aspects of punctuation that I didn't get to cover in the last post.

Julie Sweeney. "punctuation_capitalization". 4-11-13 via Flickr. CC A-NC 2.0.

This time through, I chose to pay attention to semicolons, quotation marks, and end punctuation.

The Semicolon
I think this could be one of the most under appreciated forms of punctuation. Before reading this section, I had a pretty vague understanding of what a semicolon is and how it is used. But now I recognize that it might actually be the coolest thing ever. One use (the only one I was familiar with) is to connect two closely related independent clauses. However, I also learned that you can use a transitional expression to glue two ideas together with a semicolon. Even cooler, you can use a semicolon to make a list if the items within the list have their own punctation! This really blew my mind because there have been a few occasions when I was listing things and didn't how to incorporate all the commas I thought I needed in any reasonable fashion, the answer is the semicolon. I'm going to start using these so much more now.

*There actually aren't any semicolons in my draft yet but I'm working on adding them.


Quotation Marks
Quotes are important. They help to demonstrate that you're not the only one arguing what you're arguing, which ultimately makes you a lot more credible. But the weird thing is nobody really teaches you how to use quotation marks, you're just sort of supposed to throw them around the quote and leave it at that. One thing this section really cleared up for me is where to put other punctation (periods, commas, semicolons) when you use it in combination with quotes. Although it doesn't seem like a huge deal, it's the little things that make the difference and this chapter really cleared up a lot of things that were problems for me.

*Malcolm X was once quoted saying that “if you stick a knife into my back and pull it out 3 inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn’t even begun to pull out the knife.”
^this is a rather long quote, I debated it formatting it differently from the rest of the text but it didn't seem necessary and RFW didn't say anything about that.


End Punctuation
The period, the question mark, the exclamation point. Three pieces of punctuation that are so simple people often overlook them and nobody ever learns anything more than that you put them at the end of clauses. I decided to read this section because I was curious about what else I might have been missing. I learned that question marks in a series don't actually have to follow complete sentences. Did you know that? Isn't it cool? How cool? The coolest ever? I know. And then I learned that you should be careful not to overuse exclamation points. I've heard that from many many teachers in my time (I've even had a few just tell me flat out to never use them ever), and I suppose that makes sense because they're kind of weird..

*Wouldn’t it make sense then to have women advertise to women as a means of advertising more effectively?
^rhetorical question, obviously the answer is yes.