Hand-book of punctuation

A period should always be placed after the title of an essay, oration, after a signature, an address of a person, &c.

1. It should be remembered that the period thus used, simply indicates an abbreviation, and that punctuation marks are to be used, in addition to the period, when required. When a word, written in full, requires a punctuation mark after it, the same punctuation mark should be used after the word, when it is abbreviated; as, Adrian, Michigan, January 5, 1877; Adrian, Mich., Jan. 5, 1877.

2. Some proper names are not abbreviations, and consequently a period should not be used; as, Ben Jonson, Fred Knapp. When Ben. stands for Benjamin, and Fred. for Frederick, a period should be used.

3. When numerals are represented by the letters of the alphabet, periods are placed after them; as, Gen. vii. 1, 7, 8.

4. In numbering pages, no mark should be placed after 1, 2, 3, 4, &c.

5. When a letter, used as an abbreviation, is doubled to indicate the plural, the period should be placed after the last letter; as, pp. for pages, LL. D. for Doctor of Laws.

6. In abbreviating words, sometimes the first letters are used, sometimes the first and last, and sometimes the first and some letter near the middle of the word; as, Ala. for Alabama, Chas. for Charles, Wm. for William, MS. for manuscript.

7. A list of abbreviations will be found at the close of any good dictionary.

To express an unusual degree of emotion, more than one exclamation point may be used.

1. When the connection between the interjection and what follows is very close, it is sometimes better to put the exclamation point at the end of the sentence; as,—

2. When it is desirable to express strong feeling through-out an entire sentence, the exclamation point should be placed at the end; as,—

1. A dash is sometimes used to give prominence or emphasis to an emphatic conclusion; as, “Fortune, friends, kindred, home,—all were gone.”—Prescott.

2. When such words as namely, that is, &c., are omitted, a dash is sometimes used; as, “Many actions, like the Rhone, have two sources,—one pure, and the other impure.”—Hare.

3. When a word or an expression is repeated for emphasis, a dash should be placed before it; as, “It is this, I conjure Your Lordships, for your honor, for the honor of the nation, for the honor of human nature, now intrusted to your care,—it is this duty that the Commons of England, speaking through us, claims at your hands.”—Sheridan.

1. A subject is a word or expression about which some statement is made.

2. A dash should be placed between a quotation and the author from whom the quotation is taken.

3. When a question and an answer are in the same paragraph, a dash is frequently inserted between the two; as, “Saw you my lord?”—“No, lady.”

4. When as, thus, as follows, &c., introduce an example or a quotation, a dash should be placed after the comma or colon, if what follows commences a new paragraph; as,—

3-9 is equivalent to 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

1. When the sentence, without the parenthesis, would require a comma where the dashes are used, each dash should be preceded by a comma; as, “See that aged couple,—a sad sight, truly,—John Proctor, and his wife Elizabeth.”—Hawthorne.

2. If the parenthetical expression is a question or expresses emotion, an interrogation or an exclamation point should be placed before the second dash; as, “The laurel of the hero—alas for humanity that it should be so!—grows best on the battle field.”

1. When parenthetical marks are used, it is sometimes necessary to use additional marks.

2. An interrogation point inclosed in parenthetical marks (?) implies that an assertion is doubtful.

3. An exclamation point inclosed within parenthetical marks (!) expresses irony or contempt.

4. Parenthetical marks are not as frequently used as formerly, the comma and dash being often preferred.

1. Punctuation marks are sometimes required, when the brackets are used. The same remarks apply to the brackets that apply to parenthetical marks.

2. In reporting speeches, brackets are used, when words are introduced by the reporter which do not form a part of the speech; as,—

“We would have our Union to be a union of hearts, and we would have our Constitution obeyed, not merely because of force that compels obedience, but obeyed because the people love the principles of the Constitution [long continued applause], and to-day, if I am called to the work to which Abraham Lincoln was called sixteen years ago, it is under brighter skies and more favorable auspices. [Applause.] I do hope, I do fervently believe, that, by the aid of divine Providence, we may do something in this day of peace, by works of peace, towards re-establishing, in the hearts of our countrymen, a real, a hearty attachment to the Constitution as it is, and to the Union as it is. [Long continued applause].”—President Hayes.—Chicago Tribune.

3. Parenthetical marks are frequently used instead of brackets.

1. When the exact words of another are not given, quotation marks should not be used; as,—

Longfellow says,—

Longfellow somewhere says that deeds are better than words.

2. When words are quoted from a foreign language, they should be printed in italics, and the quotation marks omitted; as, “They have their good glebe lands in manu, and care not much to rake into title deeds.”—Lamb.

3. When words are to be italicized, a straight mark should be drawn underneath the words.

4. When a quotation is followed by a comma, semicolon, colon, or period, the punctuation mark should be placed within the quotation marks; as, “Mr. M’Adam writes sometimes with genuine humor, and an occasional entirely original simile shows evidence of the possession of what phrenologists call the faculty of ‘comparison;’ but the charm of the book is its rare perspicacity.”—Harper’s Magazine.

5. When a quotation is followed by an exclamation or an interrogation point, the punctuation mark should be placed within the quotation marks, if it forms a part of the quotation; as, “I feel almost like groaning, when a young mother shows me some marvel of embroidery or machine-stitching, saying triumphantly, ‘There, I did every stitch of that myself!’”—Scribner’s Monthly.

6. When a quotation is followed by an exclamation or an interrogation point, the punctuation mark should be placed outside of the quotation marks, if it belongs to the whole sentence and not to the quotation; as, “We wonder what Handel would have said to Mozart’s scoring of ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’!”—Atlantic Monthly. “Why cannot we hear, for instance, the wonderful curioso, ‘He gave his back to the smiters,’ that forms the second part of the air, ‘He was despised,’ and the duet for contralto and tenor, ‘O death where is thy sting’?”—Atlantic Monthly.

1. The names of magazines and papers are generally printed in italics; as, The Atlantic, N. Y. Nation, Fraser’s Magazine, Appleton’s Journal, Nature, Popular Science Monthly.

2. In examining The Atlantic, Nation, Scribner’s Monthly, Harper’s, Appleton’s Magazine, Lippincott’s, Popular Science Monthly, Galaxy, Eclectic, N. A. Review, New Englander, London Quarterly, British Quarterly, Westminster Review, Edinburgh Review, Contemporary Review, The Fortnightly Review, we find that thirteen of these use quotation marks, and four use italics, in referring to the titles of books; eleven use italics, and six use quotation marks, in referring to magazines and papers.

1. Sometimes the quotation within a quotation has a word or phrase that is quoted. The word or phrase must be inclosed in double marks.

2. In quoting Scripture, it is customary to place only double marks at the beginning and end of the quotation; as, “And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.”—Mark i. 41.

1. A paragraph usually consists of several sentences. It begins on a new line, and is distinguished by a blank space on the left, at the commencement of the paragraph.

2. When parts of a quotation are omitted, use several stars to indicate the omission (* * * *), or place double marks at the beginning and end of each detached part of the quotation.

The apostrophe is made like a comma, but is placed above the line.

1. The apostrophe and s should be used with nouns in the singular, even when the word ends in s or x; as,—

• “Dickens’s Works.”—Appleton’s Journal.
• “Cox’s General History of Greece.”—Harper’s Magazine.
• “Evans’s observations.”—Edinburgh Review.
• “Mr. Hayes’s responsibility.”—N. Y. Nation.

In addition to the periodicals given above, The Atlantic, Scribner’s Monthly, Lippincott’s Magazine, Popular Science Monthly, Galaxy, N. A. Review, London Quarterly, British Quarterly, Fortnightly Review, use the additional s. The Westminster omits the additional s. In the Contemporary and Edinburgh Review, the s is used by some writers and omitted by others.

2. In the plural of nouns, the apostrophe and s are used to denote possession, when the word does not end in s; as, men’s deeds. If the word ends in s, the apostrophe only is used; as, my neighbors’ house.

3. The apostrophe should not be used before s in ours, yours, hers, theirs, its.

1. A compound word is formed by placing together two simple words.

2. Sometimes several words are connected together by hyphens; as, “He had a lively touch-and-go-away with him, very pleasant and engaging I admit.”—Wilkie Collins.

3. When a compound word comes into very general use, the hyphen is sometimes omitted; as, railroad, steamboat, bookstore.

4. To-day, to-night, to-morrow, should always be written with a hyphen.

5. When there is any doubt whether two words should be united by a hyphen or written as one word, some standard dictionary should be consulted. It will, however, be found that even dictionaries differ somewhat in the use and omission of the hyphen in compound words. In order to preserve some uniformity in spelling and in the formation of compound words, every writer should make either Webster or Worcester the final authority.

1. A prefix is a letter, syllable, or word, placed before some word, thus forming a new word.

2. If, instead of two vowels, a vowel and a consonant come together, the prefix and the word to which it is joined should usually be written as one word; as, rewrite, predetermine.

3. Vice-president, and most words with vice as a prefix, should be written with a hyphen.

4. Some writers use the diæresis instead of the hyphen. With prefixes it is better to use the hyphen, but in other words containing two vowels that do not form a diphthong, the diæresis should be used; as, Zoölogy.

1. It is better to divide a word as near the middle as possible.

2. When two words one at the end of a line and the other at the commencement of the following line, are separated by a punctuation mark, it should be placed at the end of the line, and never at the beginning.