In the past week or so I have seen numerous constructions like
this headline and lead sentence ("Erik Loomis argues that the reason we don’t see more tragedies like West, Texas is because the US has outsourced industries to places like Bangladesh..."). Should there not be a comma after "Texas" in that headline and sentence? I have even had writers tell me that editors (on internet sites) have actively removed the second comma in a mid-sentence "Cityname, State, ... " construction. Is it not still "West, Texas, ..."?
Punctuation police—can we get a ruling? Are standards shifting, or is this just a case of bad editing?
posted by stargell
on Apr 25, 2013 -
30 answers
Is there a way (a macro perhaps?) to change the spellings and punctuation in a Microsoft Word document (.docx) from "American" style to "British" (or should I say, 'British') style in one fell swoop?
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posted by dhens
on Mar 11, 2013 -
7 answers
When a sentence includes a date (month, day, and year), is it always proper to set off the year with commas?
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posted by southern_sky
on Feb 28, 2012 -
9 answers
[PunctuationFilter] When you are writing a list of people with their credentials, do you separate the person with their credentials from the next person with their credentials with commas?
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posted by Kimberly
on Feb 16, 2012 -
13 answers
Firefox / WIN7: I type in two hyphens IE -- and word processor (LibreOffice Writer) changes them into M dash IE – which is what I would love to see happen in Firefox. Alternately, if this cannot be done, is there a simple way to do this with some sort of macro on my puter? Plus, hey, while we're here, can we turn three periods IE ... into an ellipsis IE … ? (Hewlett Packard HP 630 laptop, if it matters.)
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posted by dancestoblue
on Nov 6, 2011 -
9 answers
Whither indentations? I've noticed lately that people are not using paragraph indentations for business correspondence and other public writing (e.g., public policy whitepapers.) Why is this? Is it good or bad?
posted by yarly
on Sep 7, 2011 -
27 answers
How should I denote transitions between languages in a story I'm working on?
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posted by mordax
on Jul 28, 2011 -
18 answers
Punctuation question -- Are the semicolons correct in separating the list of book titles in the following sentence, or should I use commas?
"John and Susan offer workshops based on the following books: Making Cheese: A Guide; Cheese is Your Friend: A Method for Success; and Expand Your Horizons: Give Cheese a Chance."
posted by kim in chicago
on Jul 3, 2011 -
23 answers
Punctuation filter: Comma, colon, semicolon, dash? Is what I'm saying even grammatically correct?
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posted by a.steele
on Jun 10, 2010 -
24 answers
When writing fractions as words, under what circumstances do you hyphenate them?
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posted by stenoboy
on May 14, 2010 -
6 answers
BritishPunctuationFilter: I'm an American editor preparing a author's manuscript that will soon be submited to a British publisher, and I have three exciting questions regarding dashes, hyphens, and apostrophes!
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posted by scody
on Dec 10, 2009 -
8 answers
Punctuation-filter: When opening a sentence with the phrase, "Per my discussion with Mr. White __ I am writing you regarding..." What goes in the "__"?
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posted by wfrgms
on Jun 5, 2009 -
24 answers
Semi-colon usage: "My name's John; I'm a carpenter and I enjoy repairing old homes and building new ones."
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posted by boosh
on Mar 27, 2009 -
29 answers
Punctuation question. Gentle reader - what connotation do you get from seeing
Jesus' or
Jesus's OR
Niklas' or
Niklas's? (Possessives with or without the 's' for nouns ending in 's'.)
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posted by typewriter
on Jan 23, 2009 -
43 answers
Looking for examples in literature where the author had to rely on his/her editor rather heavily. I'm thinking of instances where the authors were capable of spinning a good yarn, yet they had trouble with grammar, structure, punctuation, etc.
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posted by captainsohler
on Dec 29, 2008 -
23 answers
Punctuation filter: How would I hyphenate "... climate change related disclosures", or "... climate change specific patterns"?
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posted by stenoboy
on Aug 26, 2008 -
20 answers
MetaStyle: When using a superscripted dagger (cross) to indicate a footnote, should the footnote at the bottom of the page be preceded by a superscripted dagger or a regular-sized dagger? Should there be a space between the dagger and the footnote?
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posted by Shepherd
on Jul 14, 2008 -
16 answers
Is there a consensus on the grammatical relationship between emoticons and punctuation?
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posted by mkultra
on Apr 8, 2008 -
37 answers
What is the origin of using asterisks to bracket a self-referential action statement?
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posted by Tube
on Dec 8, 2007 -
27 answers
How do you punctuate an elliptical sentence structure?
1) Paul ate the tuna casserole; Mary, the taco salad.
OR
2) Paul ate the tuna casserole, Mary the taco salad.
I'm feeling frustrated that I'm coming across many published examples that I find confusing to read!
posted by SMP
on Sep 13, 2007 -
36 answers
My eight year old wrote her latest poem, then asked about the subtleties of poetic punctuation (commas, periods, breaks ... and why such decisions are made... help! ). The poem is included, as of course ...
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posted by RMD
on Jun 5, 2007 -
32 answers
I find myself fascinated with the intricacies of typography, punctuation, character sets etc. What books should a newbie read to become a connoisseur on these matters?
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posted by lifeless
on Apr 11, 2007 -
15 answers
Which heavy metal bands have umlauts in their names? Apart from Mötley Crüe and Motörhead, of course.
posted by tombola
on Mar 30, 2007 -
21 answers
Anyone know anything at all about Adobe GoLive's use of
-type HTML tags? Its insertion of these tags around dates, places, etc is causing extra spaces to pop up, throwing off proper punctuation and basically just making copytext look bad. [more inside]
posted by cyrusdogstar
on Jan 9, 2007 -
4 answers
In this
article, a quotation reads "What is unique about Harry S Truman's name? His middle initial doesn't need a period after it". Why not?
posted by Heatwole
on Nov 2, 2006 -
21 answers
I just realized (I'm fairly slow that way) that suddenly, and without fanfare, every language on Earth, excepting North-Korean and maybe a smattering of others, has acquired
mood punctuation i.e. emoticons. Much like a ? indicates that the
preceding sentence was a question, a jocular sentence is marked with a :)
Now, here comes my question. Are there any languages that have mood punctuation that pre-exists the internet? Or something similar? Markings that indicate a mood, feeling or emotion in any way?
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posted by Kattullus
on Aug 4, 2006 -
21 answers
How do type an upside down question mark in Outlook Express? (for Spanish class)
posted by alball
on Jan 28, 2005 -
15 answers
PunctuationFilter: I'm writing the copy for a CD insert booklet in which the title of a book is mentioned. Typically, I'd italicize it, but the entire piece is already in italics. What's the standard here?
posted by plexiwatt
on Dec 6, 2004 -
18 answers
When (and where, and maybe why) did people start doing
this ? Is it mostly a UK/Europe
thing ? Is it only occasional or a valid trend
now ?(Another question about a grammar anomaly, but I'm not complaining this time, only curious. This one only occurs in informal [Internet] communication and for some reason I enjoy it: a space between sentence end and final punctuation, when punctuation is a '!' or '?' Mostly UK- and Ireland-ers do it, like sgt serenity [a mad Scotsman] here.)
posted by Shane
on Mar 27, 2004 -
22 answers
People in my company often use a period instead of a question mark at the end of an interrogative sentence. I pointed this out to an old boss as I was proofing one of his e-mails, and he told me this is standard custom now in business communication. Is this so? What the hell?
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posted by Shane
on Mar 25, 2004 -
44 answers
Why does Outlook convert an ellipsis (...) to a question mark (?) ? This is happening on outgoing emails -- I only can tell it's happening when people reply to me and I see the email I sent in the body of their reply. It does not appear in the saved copy on my machine. I use Word as my email text editor.
posted by bowline
on Dec 10, 2003 -
4 answers
