How Good Are Your Mechanics?
On this page, we’ll talk about Punctuation and Capitalization
Punctuation Bugs
Commas,
- separate words or groups of words in a series, such as:
o cheese, eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, and cheese
- set off parts of dates, addresses, or geographical names, such as:
o December 25, 2525
o 774 Harrowing Way, New Mars Colony, Mars
- set off words in direct address, such as:
o Author, you’ve worked hard and deserve a bow.”
- are used after the words yes and no when they introduce sentences, such as:
o “Yes, you are a good writer.”
- set off direct quotations, such as:
o “We only publish fiction,” he said in an apologetic tone.
- separate simple sentences connected by the conjunctions and, but, and or, such as:
o “He’d called the author, but he hadn’t answered.”
- join two sentences. Note, do not use more than two sentences because you then create a run-on sentence, which isn’t good.
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- are used after the salutation and closing in a social or friendly letter, such as:
o “Dear Mr. Publisher, Dear Editor, and Respectfully yours”.
Apostrophes’
- an apostrophe is used to show ownership, such as:
o the man’s script; the author’s story
- is also used to replace letters left out in a contraction, such as:
o didn’t (did not); couldn’t (could not); won’t (will not)
- Apostrophes are not used as quotation marks.
“Quotation Marks”
- Are used before and after a direct quote and/or part of a direct quote, such as:
o Someone once said “Periods end it all,”
o “Periods,” someone once said, “end it all.”
- Enclose dialog used in scripts, such as:
o “This script,” the editor said as she handed it to the publisher, “is well written.”
- enclose titles of short stories, poems, magazine articles, television shows, and radio programs.
- enclose words used for emphasis or anaology
Italics
Italics are used for titles of books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television programs that are a continuing series, and works of art. When writing manually, they are underlined.
Hyphen –
- is used to join two words together to form a new word, such as “by-stander, or Halloween-like”
- is used to join the words kind + of (kind-of), and sort + of (sort-of).
- When used in dialog, indicate an abrupt break in thought
Ellipses …
- indicate a tapering off of thought
Colons; and Semi-colons:
- are used to separate and/or link thoughts
o colons are used to join thoughts/sentences
o semi-colons are used to indicate a list follows
Capitalization Court
Capitalize
- the first word of a sentence.
o Of course, you already knew that.
- proper nouns, proper adjective and their abbreviations.
A proper noun names a particular person, place, thing, or idea.
A proper adjective describes specific named persons, places, things, or ideas.
Example:
Proper Noun = American Crab
Proper Adjective = American Crab
- the important words in the titles of books, stories, plays, boats/ships, and other creative works.
In titles, capitalize the first and last words, as well as nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives.
In general, the little words such as the articles (a, an, the), conjunctions, and prepositions (through, between, from, off) are not capitalized.
- the first word of a direct quotation and of character dialog.
- the first word of each line of poetry.
- names of deities, the Bible, and other sacred books.
- north, south, east, and west when they refer to specific regions of a country.
- the first word in the salution and the complimentary close of a letter, and the name of the person addressed.
- the pronoun I and the interjection O.
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If there are any punctuation or capitalization tips you would like to see added to those above or have a question about, please contact me at sredohp@yahoo.com.
