Essential guide to writing part 27

STOPS In writing these signals must be replaced by punctuation. In business machines are built to become obsolete within a few years. In each case the object of the preposition can be misread as grammatically tied to the following word, as if the writers were talking about "writing these signals" and "business machines." Within a sentence adverbial phrases are punctuated with great variability. What the phrase where it is placed, what rhythm or emphasis the writer wants are all important. A key consideration is whether or not the phrase is felt as an is, as intruding into the normal grammatical flow of the sentence. If it is, set off the phrase by commas. Interrupting phrases often come between subject and verb: Jerusalem, of course, contains more than ghosts and architectural monstrosities. Aldous Huxley 1 Barrett Wendell, in his admirable book on writing, points out that clearness and vividness often turn on mere specificity. Brand Blanshard But they may come elsewhere: And their former masters were, from the start, resolved to maintain the old difference. Oscar Handlin Coughlin's activities were clearly, after Pearl Harbor, intolerable. Wallace Stegner Newspapermen have always felt superstitious, among other things, about Lindbergh. John Lardner In such cases the writer is seeking clarity or emphasis. The option is not so much whether to punctuate the phrase as where to place it. Any of the phrases in the three examples above could be positioned, and more idiomatically, at the end For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org PUNCTUATION and would then probably not need commas. But placed where they are, they do require punctuation. At the close of a sentence or clause, adverbial phrases are not generally punctuated: The party adjourned to the kitchen Herbert Asbury He was quiet and in-dwelling from early boyhood on. John Lardner Final adverbial phrases may be isolated for emphasis, though the technique quickly loses value if overworked: They were not men of equal status, despite the professed demo- cratic procedure. Harry Hansen And why is this picture an it is, of course? George Orwell Adverbial Clauses In initial when they precede the main clause, adver- bial clauses are usually punctuated: we figure out the answer, we feel devilishly smart; if we don't, we enjoy a juicy surprise. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. George Orwell A writer has the option of omitting the comma a short initial adverbial clause if clarity will not suffer. (British writers seem to exercise that choice more often than do Americans): When he describes the past the historian has to recapture the rich- ness of the moments, . . . Herbert However, the comma should never be left out if there is any possibility that readers will see an unintended grammatical connection between the last word of the adverbial clause and For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org STOPS the first word of the following construction. In the sentence below, for instance, a comma after "sail" would prevent read- ers from the misstep of thinking the writer is referring to "sail boats": When you are first learning to sail boats seem to be very cumber- some things. Adverbial clauses in an interrupting position are conven- tionally punctuated: The whole thing, as he himself recognized, was a clean sporting venture. P. C. On occasion, if no operations were scheduled for the next day, he would be up early and out on an all-day hunt after getting only one Or tWO hours of Ralph K. Andrist Adverbial clauses in the dosing position may or may not be punctuated. The primary considerations are clarity and rhythm. A comma generally helps readers follow the gram- mar, especially before clauses expressing a concession or qual- ification: The Supreme Court upheld the conviction, although the judges could not agree on any one opinion. Roger Fisher Now seldom cuss, although at first was quick to open fire at everything that tried my patience. Richard E. Byrd On the other hand, some writers prefer to omit the comma when the main and the adverbial clauses are both short and unpunctuated within themselves. The comma is often omitted before because if the pause might seem overly emphatic: Locke thought traditional theology worthless because it was not primarily concerned with truth. Paul Johnson For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org PUNCTUATION On one occasion, however, a following should be preceded by a comma. This is when it comes after a negative statement and is intended as a straightforward ex- planation of that statement: They did not elect him, because they distrusted him. Without the comma such a sentence may be read as an ironic assertion that "they did elect him and certainly did not dis- trust him." COMMA WITH Single-word adverbs A. Sentence adverbs: usually punctuated, whether in the initial, closing, or interrupting position However, the people left. The people, however, left. The people left, however. But there are exceptions the people left. The people therefore left. B. Adverbs modifying verbs and other modifiers: not punctu- ated unless they are in an unusual position, when a comma may be used for clarity or emphasis. The people slowly left. EMPHATIC {Slowly, the people left. The people left, slowly. II. Adverbial phrase A. Initial position: punctuation optional On the the men were satisfied B. Closing position: not generally punctuated, though comma may be used for emphasis The men were satisfied on the whole. EMPHATIC The men were satisfied, on the whole. C. Interrupting position: punctuation conventionally required The men, on the whole, were satisfied. The men were, on the whole, satisfied III. Adverbial clause For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org STOPS A. Initial position: usually punctuated When the sun went down, the women left camp. OPTION WITH SHORT, CLEARLY RELATED CLAUSES When the sun went down the women left camp. B. Closing position: not usually punctuated, though a comma may be used for emphasis or clarity The women left camp when the sun went down. EMPHATIC The women left camp, when the sun went down. C. Interrupting position: conventionally punctuated The women, when the sun went down, left camp. Comma with the Main Elements of the Sentence The main elements of a subject, verb, and ob- not separated by commas except under unusual con- ditions. Very occasionally when the subject is not a single word but a long construction, such as a noun clause, a comma may be put at its end to signal the verb (italics are added in the following examples): What makes the generation of the '60s different, is that it is largely inner-directed and uncontrolled by adult-doyens. magazine In such a sentence the comma between the subject and the verb may help readers to follow the grammar. Commas may also be used with the main elements in the case of is, when the subject, verb, and object are arranged in something other than their usual order. Some- times the pattern is object, subject, verb; if the object is a long construction, a comma may be set between it and the subject: What he actually meant by it, cannot imagine. Aldous Huxley The most frequent kind of inversion in composition occurs with the idiom "I think" ("I suppose," "I imagine," "I hope" are other variations): For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org PUNCTUATION The lectures, / understand, are given and may even be taken. Stephen Lenin, on the contrary, might, / think, have seemed to me at once a narrow-minded fanatic and a cheap cynic. Bertrand Russell In this type of sentence the main subject/verb is the "I think," "I understand." The rest (which contains the key idea) is a contact clause acting as the direct object, telling us what is understood or thought. If the sentence were in straightfor- ward order, no comma would be necessary between the main elements: understand the lectures are given think Lenin might have seemed But when the "I understand" or "I think" is intruded within the noun clause, the subject/verb must be treated as an inter- rupting construction and set off by commas. Comma with Appositives An appositive is a word or construction which refers to the same thing as another and is (usually) set immediately after it. When appositives are restrictive, they are not punctuated: The argument that the corporations create new psychological needs in order to sell their wares is equally flimsy. Ellen Willis In that sentence the clause is in restrictive apposition to the subject "argument"; it "argument," and the noun would be relatively meaningless without it. Notice that the clause is not set off by commas. (Sometimes, however, a comma is placed after such a not mark its end and signal a new construction.) Often appositives are nonrestrictive. In that case they must be punctuated. Usually such appositives follow the noun and For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org STOPS should be preceded by a comma (and followed by one if they do not close the sentence): Poskitt, the of the links, was a man who brought to the tee the tactics which in his youth had won him such fame as a hammer thrower. p. G. The newcomers were pagans, worshippers of and other Teu- tonic gods. Margaret Schlauch She was a splendid woman, this Guyon. w. Lewis Appositives occasionally open a clause or sentence, thus preceding the word to which they are in apposition. Then they must be followed by a comma, as in this example where a series of three appositives precedes the subject ("Bishop An- A gifted preacher, a profound scholar, and a great and good man, Bishop Andrewes was one of the lights of the Church of England. G. P. V. Akrigg Comma with Absolutes An absolute is a construction that is included within a sen- tence but is not really a grammatical part of that sentence; it serves as a kind of loose clausal Nominative absolutes, the most common kind in compo- sition, may precede, follow, or be intruded into the main clause. In all cases they are punctuated (the absolutes are ital- icized in the following examples): The savings of the nation having been absorbed by Wall Street, the people were persuaded to borrow money on their farms, factories, homes, machinery, and every other tangible asset that they might earn high interest rates and take big profits out of the rise in the market. Irving Stone For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org PUNCTUATION The bluffs along the water's edge were streaked with black and red and yellow, their colors deepened by recent rains. John G. The official, his white shirt clinging with sweat to his ribs, received me with a politeness clearly on the inner edge of neurosis. James Cameron Participial and infinitive absolutes are also punctuated: Allowing for hyperbole and halving the figure, that is still one hell a pile of pulp. Pauline To revert for a moment to the story told in the first person, it is plain that in that case the narrator has no such liberty. . . . Percy Comma with Suspended Constructions A suspended construction occurs when two or more units are hooked grammatically to the same thing. It is really a form of parallelism, but an unusual or emphatic form, which read- ers may find difficult. Hence such constructions are often (though not invariably) punctuated: Many people believed, and still do, that he was taking Nazi money to run his machine. Wallace Stegner Prescott and Parkman were willing, and Motley reluctant, to con- cede that the sixteenth-century Spaniard's desire to convert Amer- ican Indians had not been hypocritical. David Levin When the idiomatic phrase more or less is treated as a sus- pended construction, it always requires commas to distin- guish it from its more common meaning. Usually more or less signifies a qualified affirmation, and then is not punctuated: He was more or less interested. = He was mildly interested. For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org STOPS But when more or less is used in a strict disjunctive that is, to mean either more or less, but not must be set off by commas: It is hard to say whether the payment for votes has become more, less, important. Ronald P. Dore > Comma with Dates and Place-names In American usage, dates are conventionally punctuated like this: April 14, 1926 April In European usage the day precedes the month, in which case a comma is unnecessary: 14 April 1926 In those place-names that consist of both a local and larger designation (state, region, province, nation), a comma is placed between the two: London, Ontario Kittery Point, Maine The Dash The dash ought not to be confused with the hyphen. It is a longer mark, and on a typewriter is made either by two hyphens (—) or by a single hyphen with a space on either side (-). The dash has no function that is uniquely its own. Instead it acts as a strong comma and as a less formal equivalent to the semicolon, the colon, and the parenthesis. As a substitute for the comma, the dash signals a stronger, more For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org PUNCTUATION pause. For that reason it should be used reserved for occasions when emphasis is really needed. The Dash Isolating Final Constructions Dashes force an emphatic pause before the last word or phrase of a sentence: Our time is one of disillusion in our species and a resulting lack of good historical reasons. Barbara So the gift of symbolism, which is the gift of reason, is at the same time the seat of man's peculiar danger of lunacy. Susanne K. The Dash Around Interrupting Phrases and Dependent Clauses Dashes may set off dependent interrupting constructions such as nonrestrictive adjective clauses, adverbial phrases and clauses, appositives, and suspended constructions. In such a use, they create emphasis. After graduation from high he [Charles Lindbergh] once wrote an elaborate and not uncomical satire on the finicky methods of his English took three semesters in engi- neering at the University of Wisconsin, where the only thing that seemed to interest him much was shooting (he made the rifle team). John Lardner a gun in his ribs, another in his back, and a gloating voice saying that in ten seconds he'll be does become a trifle anxious. Charles Rotten logs can also be host to the ghostly glow of slime fungus, a plant that the logs or along the ground. Ruth Rudner Some of those writers who most admired Henry Adams, and H. G. Wells, for feared it greatly. Samuel C. For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org [...]... says the historian Friedrich Heer, the crusades were promoted with all the devices of the propagandist—atrocity stories, over-simplification, lies, inflammatory speeches Morris Bishop t> The Dash Around Intrusive Sentence Absolutes An intrusive sentence absolute is a completely independent second sentence which is stuck into the middle of a containing statement without being syntactically tied to it in... and editors prefer to drop the -s, using the apostrophe alone to indicate possession: for appearance's sake OR for appearance' sake The issue can often be dodged by using an o/-phrase: for the sake of appearance Plural nouns ending in -s (the vast majority) add only an apostrophe: the girls' books, the mechanics' toolboxes Those which do not end in -s add -'5: the men's books, the children's toys Proper... these stops would imply a grammatical connection between it and the containing sentence which does not exist Parentheses could be used and sometimes are; but they are a little formal for this kind of construction, which is colloquial in tone Here, then, is the one function which belongs primarily to the dash: The opening paragraph—it is one of Pushkin's famous openings— plunges the reader into the... likely to be misused, probably because of confusion with the contraction it's for it is Never use it's for the possessive of it: The cat washed its tail NOT The cat washed it's tail The possessive of who is whose, not who's, which is the contraction of who is t> Apostrophe to Show Contraction A contraction is the coming together of two or more words with the omission of intervening sounds (in writing, ... a limited degree—that crime is not so much willful sin as the product of sickness Charles j Rob For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org 3 1 The Other Marks In addition to the stops, punctuation marks include the apostrophe, the quotation mark, the hyphen, the ellipsis, the parenthesis and bracket, and the diacritics We look at these here, along with the related matters of... pronouns, the contraction of two words, and the omission of sound within a word It also appears in the plurals of certain abbreviations t> Apostrophe to Show Possession Common Nouns In their singular form common nouns that do not end in -s or another sibilant add -'s to show possession: the cat's bowl, the girl's hat, the boy's jacket Singular nouns with a final sibilant also generally add the -'s in modern... repeating that the dash is not the conventional stop for such a case and should be employed only when emphasis is necessary: He was a sad, embittered young man—and well he might be Aldous Huxley Even uncoordinated independent clauses may be punctuated by a dash instead of the conventional semicolon: Hammer is not just any Superman—he has The Call Charles J Rolo A town may impose regulation upon the use of... into the heart of the matter Rosemary Edmonds He has never, himself, done anything for which to be hated—which of us has?—and yet he is facing, daily and nightly, people who would gladly see him dead, and he knows it , James Baldwin He [the psychoanalyst] tells us—and the notion has gained official acceptance to a limited degree—that crime is not so much willful sin as the product of sickness Charles... not have a final sibilant follow the same rule as common nouns: Sarah's house, Eisenhower's career With proper nouns ending in sibilants, practice varies If the noun is monosyllabic, it is conventional to add the full -'s: Henry James's novels, John Keats's poetry But opinion differs when proper names have more than a single syllable Some people prefer -'s, some the apostrophe alone: For more material...For more material and information, please visit www.tailieuduhoc.org STOPS 415 Notice, in the last example, that dashes are clearer signals of the grammar than commas would be, since the interrupting series contains commas > The Dash with Coordinated Elements As we saw with . hell a pile of pulp. Pauline To revert for a moment to the story told in the first person, it is plain that in that case the narrator has no such liberty suffer. (British writers seem to exercise that choice more often than do Americans): When he describes the past the historian has to recapture the rich- ness