Dallas Public Library

Punctuation at work, simple principles for achieving clarity and good style, Richard Lauchman

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

index present

non fiction

Punctuation at work

bibliography

Richard Lauchman

simple principles for achieving clarity and good style

Punctuation can't rescue sense from nonsense -- The main reason to punctuate is to clarify your intent -- One of punctuation's tasks is to supply the various signals given by the voice -- In workplace writing, a sentence should yield its meaning instantly -- Punctuation should be invisible -- Punctuation follows the arrangement of words -- Punctuation indicates how ideas relate -- Punctuation suggests how much emphasis an idea deserves -- Punctuation slows the reading -- Don't count too much on context to make your meaning plain -- Know the difference between restrictive and non-restrictive expressions -- Respect the distinction between that and which -- When is punctuation optional? -- Use the serial comma -- When do I separate adjectives with a comma? -- Use the hyphen to clarify "improvised usage" -- Sometimes, no matter how you punctuate, a reader is going to think it's wrong -- Feed your head -- When you see an odd usage, consider the source -- Apostrophe -- Brackets -- Colon -- Comma -- Dash -- Ellipsis -- Hyphen -- Parentheses -- Period -- Question mark -- Quotation marks -- Semicolon -- Slash -- Punctuating common sentence structures