Advanced Punctuation Situations
A Practical Reference For When You’re stuck
Punctuation can be the bane of a writer’s existence. It seems straightforward. You use a period at the end of a sentence or a question mark at the end of a question. If you’re excited you use an exclamation point.
It’s not until you’re nose deep into your writing that you realize, it’s not as simple as what goes at the end of a sentence. Let’s take a look at a few situations that might stall our writing and make us think.
Proper Use of Quotation Marks
If you use opening quotation marks, you must also use closing quotation marks.
If you’re not quoting someone or writing dialogue, don’t use quotation marks.
When it comes time to use them, decide if you’re going to use single (‘…’)or double (“…”)quotation marks. It’s a matter of preference (yours or your publisher’s) and regional style. American English tends to prefer “ quotes for dialogue and ‘ for a quote within a quote, while the opposite is true for Canadian and European English.
Whichever you choose, know that you’ll use the other kind for a quote within a quote. So if you frame your dialogue with double quotation marks, you’ll use single quotation marks when quoting another person in your dialogue.
