Sunday, April 15, 2007

Ask SPOGG: Reader Questions Answered

Do you have a question for SPOGG? We'll do our best to answer. The following questions come from the lovely Lucy, who's been forced to play grammar pingpong between her teachers and her bosses.

Our answers are in red (and Lucy's teachers should be spanked).

Hi, hope you can help resolve the discrepancy between what I was taught and what I'm now being told.
1. Taught: Period goes outside the quotation marks.
Example: John replied, "I'm going home".
Told: Period goes inside the quotation marks.
Example: John replied, "I'm going home."

Did you learn English in England? With British punctuation, the period does go outside. In the United States, we put periods and commas inside. So, your second example is correct while your first is not (assuming you're writing in the colonies, that is).
2. Taught: Put a colon at beginning of a series and never put a semi-colon in front of the word "and".
Example of taught: Responsible for all non-sales related operations such as: A/P, A/R, payroll, and human resources.
Told: No puncuation at the beginning of a series and yes, put a semi-colon in front of the word "and".
Example of told: Responsible for all non-sales related operations such as A/P; A/R; payroll; and human resources.

It depends on two things: how your series is introduced and how complex it is.

1) If you'd said, "Responsible for all non-sales-related operations: A/P, A/R, payroll and human resources," then you'd use a colon. But you have "such as" there, so no colon is needed.

2) You do NOT need the semicolons with a simple sequence such as the one you've described. But if the sequence were more complex, like this one, it would help keep things clear:

"I love the characters in Harry Potter: the academic, passionate Hermione; the bumbling, loyal Ron Weasley; and the oleaginous, intriguing Professor Snape."

A comma between characters and their descriptions here would not be sufficient.

We recommend "The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual" for questions like these, unless you're writing for a more formal publication, in which case "The Chicago Manual of Style" is a better choice.



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