This month’s workout centers on sections 6.09–11 of The Chicago Manual of Style, “Punctuation in Relation to Closing Quotation Marks.” Advanced editors might tackle the questions cold; learners can study sections 6.09–11 of the Manual before answering the questions.
How many times have you wavered over putting hyphens into an expression that combines numbers with some kind of measure? Is the child six-years-old or six years old?
When we saw the beautiful graphics recently in the Washington Post that Princeton neuroscientist Adam J. Calhoun created from famous works, we couldn’t help but wonder how The Chicago Manual of Style would hold up under the same scrutiny.
CMOS receives regular queries from readers asking whether greetings like “Hi, Elsa” really need that comma. Especially in e-mail messages, we hear, it looks fussy. And it takes so long to type!
A look back to 1906, when the more straitlaced 1st edition of the Manual offered intriguing punctuation!, puzzling spaces ?, and curious examples . . .
There is a part of CMOS 7.75 that continues to trouble readers, probably because it is an exception to the general rule (stated at 6.9) that “periods and commas precede closing quotation marks, whether double or single.”
A look back to 1906, when the more straitlaced 1st edition of the Manual offered intriguing punctuation, puzzling spaces, and curious examples . . .
This month Keith Houston is our guide to the sometimes-forgotten (but eternally-interesting) realms of punctuation. His blog Shady Characters and its eponymous book Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation explore the history and use of the marks that make our work so readable.