Guide to Punctuation
Why Learn to Punctuate?
Why should you learn to punctuate properly? After all, many people have made successful careers without ever learning the difference between a colon and a semicolon. Perhaps you consider punctuation to be an inconsequential bit of decoration, not worth spending your valuable time on. Or perhaps you even regard punctuation as a deeply personal matter — a mode of self-expression not unlike your taste in clothes or music.
Well, punctuation is one aspect of written English. How do you feel about other aspects of written English? Would you happily write pair when you mean pear, because you think the first is a nicer spelling? Would you, in an essay, write Einstein were a right clever lad, 'e were, just because that's the way people speak where you come from? Would you consider it acceptable to write proceed when you mean precede, or vice versa, because you've never understood the difference between them? Probably not — at least, I hope not.
Yet it is quite possible that you do things that are every bit as strange and bewildering when you punctuate your writing. Perhaps you use commas in what we shall soon see are surprising places, merely because you think you might pause there in speech. Perhaps you use semicolons where you should be using colons, because you've never quite understood the difference between them. Or perhaps, if you're really committed to punctuation as self-expression, you just stick in whatever punctuation takes your fancy, because it's your piece of work, and so it ought to have yourpunctuation.
The problem with poor punctuation is that it makes life difficult for the reader who needs to read what you've written. That reader shouldn't have to make allowances for your personal tastes in spelling and grammar: she expects to see standard English spellings and standard English grammatical forms. And the same is true for punctuation: she is most unlikely to know what your personal theories of punctuation are, and she won't be interested in them. She'll only be interested in understanding what you've written, and she's going to have trouble understanding it if it's badly punctuated.
When we speak English, we have all sorts of things we can use to make our meaning clear: stress, intonation, rhythm, pauses — even, if all else fails, repeating what we've said. When we write, however, we can't use any of these devices, and the work that they do in speech must be almost entirely handled by punctuation. Consequently, written English has developed a conventional system of punctuation which is consistent and sensible: every punctuation mark has one or more particular jobs to do, and every one should be used always and only to do those jobs. If your reader has to wade through your strange punctuation, she will have trouble following your meaning; at worst, she may be genuinely unable to understand what you've written. If you think I'm exaggerating, consider the following string of words, and try to decide what it's supposed to mean:
We had one problem only Janet knew we faced bankruptcy
Have you decided? Now consider this string again with differing punctuation:
We had one problem: only Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.
We had one problem only: Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.
We had one problem only, Janet knew: we faced bankruptcy.
We had one problem only Janet knew we faced: bankruptcy.
Are you satisfied that all four of these have completely different meanings? If so, perhaps you have some inkling of how badly you can confuse your reader by punctuating poorly. What is the reader supposed to make of some feeble effort like this?
*We had one problem only, Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.
(Throughout this document, an asterisk is used to mark a sentence which is poorly punctuated, or which is otherwise defective.)
Bad punctuation does not require an enormous effort to put right. If you work carefully through this document, then, providing you think carefully about what you're writing as you write it, you will undoubtedly find that your punctuation has improved a great deal. Your readers will thank you for it ever after.
The full stop (.), also called the period, presents few problems. It is chiefly used to mark the end of a sentence expressing a statement, as in the following examples:
Terry Pratchett's latest book is not yet out in paperback.
I asked her whether she could tell me the way to Brighton.
A question mark (?) is placed at the end of a sentence which is a direct question. Here are some examples:
What is the capital of Wales?
Does anyone have a pen I can borrow?
Who told you that?
In which country did coffee originate?
If the question is a direct quotation, repeating the speaker's exact words, a question mark is still used:
"Have you a pen I can borrow?" she asked.
"How many of you have pets at home?" inquired the teacher.
But a question mark is not used in an indirect question, in which the speaker's exact words are not repeated:
She asked if I had a pen she could borrow.
The teacher asked how many of us had pets at home.
Here only a full stop is used, since the whole sentence is now a statement.
The question mark also has one minor use: it may be inserted into the middle of something, inside parentheses, to show that something is uncertain. Here are two examples:
The famous allegorical poem Piers Plowman is attributed to William Langland (?1332?1400).
The Lerga inscription fascinatingly contains the personal name Vmme Sahar (?), which looks like perfect Basque.
The question marks on the poet's birth and death dates indicate that those dates are not certain, and the one in the second example indicates that the reading of the name is possibly doubtful.
Summary of Question Marks:
 Use a question mark at the end of a direct question.
Do not use a question mark at the end of an indirect question.
Use an internal question mark to show that something is uncertain.
The Comma
The comma (,) is very frequently used and very frequently used wrongly. In fact, the rules for using commas are really rather simple, though complicated by the fact that the comma has four distinct uses. To begin with, forget anything you've ever been told about using a comma "wherever you would pause", or anything of the sort; this well-meaning advice is hopelessly misleading. In this document, the four uses of the comma are called the listing comma, the joining comma, the gapping comma and bracketing commas. Each use has its own rules, but note that a comma is never preceded by a white space and always followed by a white space.
The Listing Comma
The Joining Comma
The Gapping Comma
Bracketing Commas
Summary of Commas
The listing comma is used as a kind of substitute for the word and, or sometimes for or. It occurs in two slightly different circumstances. First, it is used in a list when three or more words, phrases or even complete sentences are joined by the word and or or; we might call this construction an X, Y and Z list:
The Three Musketeers were Athos, Porthos and Aramis.
The joining comma is only slightly different from the listing comma. It is used to join two complete sentences into a single sentence, and it must be followed by a suitable connecting word. The connecting words which can be used in this way are and, or, but, while and yet. Here are some examples:
Norway has applied to join the EC, and Sweden is expected to do the same.
You must hand in your essay by Friday, or you will receive a mark of zero.
The gapping comma is very easy. We use a gapping comma to show that one or more words have been left out when the missing words would simply repeat the words already used earlier in the same sentence. Here is an example:
Some Norwegians wanted to base their national language on the speech of the capital city; others, on the speech of the rural countryside.
The gapping comma here shows that the words wanted to base their national language, which might have been repeated, have instead been omitted. This sentence is equivalent to a longer sentence like this:
Some Norwegians wanted to base their national language on the speech of the capital city; others wanted to base it on the speech of the rural countryside
Bracketing commas (also called isolating commas) do a very different job from the other three types. These are the most frequently used type of comma, and they cause more problems than the other types put together. The rule is this: a pair of bracketing commas is used to mark off a weak interruption of the sentence — that is, an interruption which does not disturb the smooth flow of the sentence. Note that word `pair': bracketing commas, in principle at least, always occur in pairs, though sometimes one of them is not written, as explained below. Look carefully at these examples of bracketing commas:
These findings, we would suggest, cast doubt upon his hypothesis.
Schliemann, of course, did his digging before modern archaeology was invented.
Pratchett has, it would seem, abandoned Rincewind the wizard to the ravages of the Discworld.
There are four types of comma: the listing comma, the joining comma, the gapping comma and bracketing commas.
A listing comma can always be replaced by the word and or or:
Vanessa seems to live on eggs, pasta and aubergines.
Vanessa seems to live on eggs and pasta and aubergines.
Choose an article from the Guardian, the Independent or the Times.
Choose an article from the Guardian or the Independent or the Times.
Stanley was an energetic, determined and even ruthless figure.
Stanley was an an energetic and determined and even ruthless figure.
A joining comma must be followed by one of the connecting words and, or, but, yet or while:
The report was due last week, but it hasn't appeared yet.
The motorways in France and Spain are toll roads, while those in Britain are free.
A gapping comma indicates that you have decided not to repeat some words which have already occurred in the sentence:
Jupiter is the largest planet and Pluto, the smallest.
Bracketing commas always come in pairs, unless one of them would come at the beginning or the end of the sentence, and they always set off a weak interruption which could in principle be removed from the sentence:
My father, who hated cricket, always refused to watch me play.
We have a slight problem, to put it mildly.
If you're not sure about your commas, you can check them by using these rules. Ask yourself these questions:
1. Can the comma be replaced by and or or?
2. Is it followed by one of the connecting words and, or, but, yet or while?
3. Does it represent the absence of repetition?
4. Does it form one of a pair of commas setting off an interruption which could be removed from the sentence?
If the answer to all these questions is `no', you have done something wrong. Try these questions on the following example:
The publication of The Hobbit in 1937, marked the beginning of Tolkien's career as a fantasy writer.
The colon (:) seems to bewilder many people, though it's really rather easy to use correctly, since it has only one major use. But first please note the following: the colon is never preceded by a white space; it is always followed by a single white space in normal use, and it is never, never, never followed by a hyphen or a dash — in spite of what you might have been taught in school. One of the commonest of all punctuation mistakes is following a colon with a completely pointless hyphen.
The colon is used to indicate that what follows it is an explanation or elaboration of what precedes it. That is, having introduced some topic in more general terms, you can use a colon and go on to explain that same topic in more specific terms. Schematically:
More general: more specific
A colon is nearly always preceded by a complete sentence; what follows the colon may or may not be a complete sentence, and it may be a mere list or even a single word. A colon is not normally followed by a capital letter in British usage, though American usage often prefers to use a capital. Here are some examples:
Africa is facing a terrifying problem: perpetual drought.
The semicolon (;) has only one major use. It is used to join two complete sentences into a single written sentence when all of the following conditions are met:
(1) The two sentences are felt to be too closely related to be separated by a full stop;
(2) There is no connecting word which would require a comma, such as and or but;
(3) The special conditions requiring a colon are absent.
Here is a famous example:
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
A semicolon can always, in principle, be replaced either by a full stop (yielding two separate sentences) or by the word and (possibly preceded by a joining comma). Thus Dickens might have written:
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. or
It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.
The use of the semicolon suggests that the writer sees the two smaller sentences as being more closely related than the average two consecutive sentences; preferring the semicolon to and often gives a more vivid sense of the relation between the two. But observe carefully: the semicolon must be both preceded by a complete sentence and followed by a complete sentence.
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Guide to Punctuation
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