Misha999 (imported) wrote: Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:37 am
Here are a few more tips. If you use a ? you don't need , he/she asked.
The question mark signifies that without the speech tag.
The same goes for the exclamation mark ! .
Unless of course it is no longer clear whose turn it is to ask or exclaim; the function of the main clause (i.e. he said, she expostulated, or it asserted-- the quoted material is the dependent, embedded clause functioning as the direct object of the verb of speech) is not to identify the type of dependent clause but to identify the speaker.
Misha999 (imported) wrote: Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:37 am
For internal thoughts the current trend is to italicize the text e.g. Jim found the door hidden behind the bed. Well I'll be damed!
Rather than Jim found the door hidden behind the bed. "Well I'll be damed!", Jim thought.
Different houses have different practices, but all agree that commas and periods go INSIDE the double quotes, and there is only one mark of punctuation used at a time. The last sentence should be correctly punctuated
"Well I'll be damed!" Jim thought.
Question marks and exclamations are inside the double quotes if they belong to the quoted material, that is the quotation itself is a question or exclamation such as "Damn, are you sure he is that dumb?" but outside if you are questioning or exclaiming about a quote such as Did he really say "I know how to punctuate"?
Colons and semicolons always go outside of double quotes.
Some houses differ on matters of whether or nor to include a comma before the last item in a series. Some prefer The plots in novels by Dickens are improbable, his characters shallow, and his sentiment histrionic. Others are comfortable with A novel by Dickens is bound to be outdated, maudlin and depressing.
Some presses (Oxford is the most notable) omit the final period in abbreviations that end with the final letter of the word. Therefore, one can write "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" but must use "Prof. Jones and the Temple of Doom."
Most professional presses have a manual of style; many are largely reflections of the University of Chicago Manual of Style, which also dictates how to set up the copyright, title, and bastard title pages.
The late Diane Hacker has gained immortality through A Writer's Reference, which is a cheap, compact manual of style available in most college bookstores and abundantly available in used bookshops when the students leave college and proceed to forget everything they've learned. Professionals tend to rely on handbooks of major presses, like the Chicago, Prentice-Hall, or Little-Brown although the consolidation of more and more publishers into fewer and fewer actual companies is pushing many of these handbooks into obsolescence. The United States Government Printing Office also publishes a manual of style, printed at tax-payer expense and therefore available through the GPO very cheaply, and believe it or not, your government has a rather good sense of style, which leads me to believe that none of our public servants have ever read it.
My advice to the archive is to choose one of these as the official style sheet and refer prospective authors to it for matters of format. Hacker is probably the cheapest comprehensive manual that is readily available. The GPO Manual is thorough, but unless you are inclined to write off for government publications, not likely to fall into your hands. Chicago is more authoritative, but also more expensive and probably needlessly complex. It covers the niceities of differentiating between Dutch and French when alphabetizing authors for bibliographies, how to properly transliterate Urdu, and how to distinguish between a figure and a table.
