Punctuation for NowPalgrave Macmillan UK, 1990 M07 9 - 213 pages It's or Its? Full stop inside or outside the inverted commas? What's the difference between a semi-colon and a colon? Cooperate or co-operate? Punctuation For Now describes in a witty but authoritative way how our present system of punctuation has grown out of the history of our language. It also indicates the conventions that govern the best punctuation in the English of today. The rules are set out clearly, and reinforced by abundant examples from the work of such authors as Kingsley Amis and Evelyn Waugh. Anyone with an examination to pass, or with a child who is learning to use English, or who writes it for a living, will find Punctuation For Now an invaluable guide and friend. |
Contents
All the Stops and Pretty Whiles | 40 |
Dashes Dots and Flying Commas | 88 |
WriterPrinterReader | 145 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
abbreviation adjective apostrophe ation Boswell brackets called capital letter capitalised Caxton century Chapter clauses colon comma Compare compounds convention Corinthians 13 dash device Dictionary dots effect eighteenth English Grammar English Language English Usage Eric Partridge Evelyn Waugh example exclamation mark Fowler full stop genitive Geoffrey Leech give Greek Hart's Rules Henry James hyphen indicate inverted commas italics John Keats Kingsley Amis L. P. Hartley Latin literary London look Lord manuscripts matter meaning minimalist modern names Note omission Oxford paragraph parentheses particularly passage pauses plural possessive apostrophe practice preferences printers proper nouns published punctu question mark quotation marks quotes Randolph Quirk reader reading require Robert Burchfield rules Samuel Johnson semi-colon sense sentence separate Shakespeare Simon Raven sometimes spoken style syntactic system of punctuation thing tion titles underlined virgule vowel woman words writing written