Why We Punctuate; or, Reason Versus Rule in the Use of Marks

As has already been seen, we determine what mark of punctuation is helpful at any point in written or printed language by the sense relation between two groups of words and by t...

Thus far in our discussion we have considered grouping done by commas only, except incidentally in Sentences 6, 6-2, 7, 7-1, and 7-2. We shall now consider the application of ou...

The Greek grammarians gave the name _parenthesis_ to a group of words “thrust into” language, either spoken or written, when such words have no _grammatical_ connection with the...

Almost all writers on punctuation refer to a close open styles of punctuation, but they make no attempt clearly to define or to differentiate these terms. In general, the _close...

It is often said that the dash is the mark of ignorance in punctuation. When a writer does not know how to punctuate his own language at any point he uses a dash. When one, in t...

We know of no writer who has attempted to differentiate the above marks; but some writers have dismissed the subject by saying that these marks are interchangeable. Such a state...

We endeavored to show in Chapter I that the fundamental purpose of punctuation is to group by means of marks words whose relations in the absence of marks would be either easily...

We shall discuss in this chapter some uses of marks determined partly by reason and partly by convention. In a subsequent chapter we shall take up the purely conventional uses o...

Many uses of marks seem to be based solely upon convention, or arbitrary custom. Back of this convention there may be, in many cases, reason for the punctuation; but, more frequ...

A mark of punctuation is used because it has a meaning, and serves a useful, if not an indispensable, purpose in printed language.[1] In order to serve such purpose, the meaning...

It is not wise to make the meaning of language, especially in important matters, depend upon a mode of punctuation little understood. The wise way is to recast the language. Leg...

The principal use of brackets is to show that a bracketed word or group of words in a quotation is inserted by the writer using the quoted language, and not by the author of suc...

Quotation-marks are used by a writer to identify as the exact language of another writer a word or group of words which the first writer uses within his own language.

We shall not attempt to treat the subject of abbreviations exhaustively or even fully, for it goes beyond the subject of punctuation; but its importance seems to justify its con...

We add this chapter on compound words to a work on punctuation simply to record our high estimate of the value of the subject, and our protest against its complete neglect by hi...

In No. 75 we give the language its natural meaning. In No. 75-1 we use a comma to show that the natural meaning is not the meaning we wish to convey; we disconnect “large” from...