WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!

Quotation marks are not that tough

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE! Illustration
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE! Illustration

Quotation marks are the awkward teenagers of the punctuation family.

No matter where they sit in the sentence, they seem slightly ill at ease, out of place, uncomfortable.

You use quotation marks, of course, to show that you are quoting a person or, less often, an animal.

"Let's go for a walk, Sophocles,'' Cedric said to his schnauzer.

"Woof,'' Sophocles barked. "Woof, woof.''

Quotation marks also have other purposes.

Use them around the titles of movies or books (unless you write for a news

paper that italicizes such titles).

The movie "Slaughterhouse-Five'' was nearly as good as the Kurt Vonnegut book of the same name.

Use them with nicknames.

Hockey player Mike "Suitcase" Sillinger earned his nickname by playing on 12 NHL teams in his career. No moss grew under him.

Use them to show the irony of a certain word or phrase.

The "mobilization unit'' I was promised in my work contract turned out to be a skateboard.

Use them with words that some people may not be familiar with.

The recipe called for a "gill,'' which sounded fishy to me. It simply meant four fluid ounces.

Quotation marks are most troublesome when used with other punctuation. Follow a couple of rules, and you'll be fine.

Periods or commas go inside the quotation marks.

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,'' he said.

He told me, "The world isn't fair.''

Question marks, exclamation points, dashes and semicolons go inside the quotation marks only if they are part of what is being quoted.

"I like watching the movie Oklahoma!"

But they should be outside when they're part of the entire sentence.

Are you sure this skateboard is my "mobilization unit"?

OVER AND OVER AND OVER

A reader sent me a great list of redundancies he had heard on TV shows. I did not hear any of these reports to confirm, but this reader is a man of the cloth, so I believe him.

In a school budget story, it was reported that the school board was "seeking immediate relief soon."

When done correctly, immediate relief should be even sooner than soon.

"The committee released a long and lengthy report on the controversy."

All the best long reports are lengthy, as well.

"They'll host the event this evening at 7 p.m."

That's at night. Not this morning at 7 p.m.

"The display was one of the most unique we've ever seen."

Something is either unique or it's not. Unique means one of a kind.

"The little girls in the pageant were lovely and pretty."

Can you distinguish between those two?

Sources: The Associated Press Stylebook, Leonard Cohen and Randy Newman lyrics, askmen.com, Grammar Girl, Merriam-Webster.

Reach Bernadette at

bkwordmonger@gmail.com

ActiveStyle on 04/03/2017

Upcoming Events