The Penguin Guide to Punctuation

Table of Contents






PENGUI N BOOK S Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5TZ, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4.V 3B2
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Private Bag 102902, NSMC, Auckland, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published 1997
10 9 8 7 6

Copyright © R. L. Trask, 1997
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Set in nVi/1 sVipt Monotype Bembo
Typeset by Rowland Phocotypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher`s
prior consent in any fonn of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Acknowledgements vii i
To the Reader ix


Chapter i Why Learn to Punctuate? i

Chapter 2 The Full Stop, the Question Mark and the Exclamation Mark 5
2.1 The Full Stop 5
2.2 The Question Mark 8
2.3 The Exclamation Mark 9
2.4 A Final Point 11
2.5 Fragments 12

Chapter 3 The Comma 13
3.1 The Listing Comma 13
3.2 The Joining Comma 17



Chapter 4 The Colon and the Semicolon
4.1 The Colon 38

vi The Penguin Guide to Punctuation


4.2 The Semicolon 41
4.3 The Colon and the Semicolon
Compared 45

Chapter 5 The Apostrophe 48
5.1 Contractions 49
5.2 Unusual Plurals 54
5.3 Possessives 56

Chapter 6 The Hyphen and the Dash 59
6.1 The Hyphen 59
6.2 The Dash 68

Chapter 7 Capital Letters and Abbreviations 73
7.1 Capital Letters 73
7.2 Abbreviations 85

Chapter 8 Quotation Marks 94
8.1 Quotation Marks and Direct
Quotations 94
8.2 Scare Quotes 107
8.3 Quotation Marks in Titles 109
8.4 Talking About Words no

Chapter 9 Miscellaneous 113
9.1 Italics 113
9.2 Boldface 117
9.3 Small Capitals 118
9.4 Parentheses 119
9.5 Square Brackets 122
Table of Contents vii


9.6 The Ellipsis 123
9.7 The Slash 124
9.8 Numerals, Fractions and Dates 125

9.9 Diacritics 129
9.10 The Other Marks on Your
Keyboard 132
9.11 Priority Among Punctuation Marks 13 5

Chapter 10 Punctuating Essays and Letters 138
10.1 Titles and Section Headings 138

10.2 Footnotes 141
10.3 References to Published Work 145

10.4 Bibliography 149
10.5 Paragraphing 154
10.6 Punctuating Letters 155


Bibliography 157
Other Useful Works on Punctuation 15 8

Index 159
x The Penguin Guide to Punctuation


case what is wrong. All of the most frequent punctuation mistakes are treated in this way.
The punctuation described here is the style which is cur- rently the norm in Britain and the Commonwealth. Standard American usage differs in a few respects; in these cases, American usage is also described, but examples of specif- ically American punctuation are always marked as follows: (A). If you are writing expressly for an American audience, you should follow the American norms.
The book also covers a few topics which are not strictly aspects of punctuation, such as the proper use of capital letters, of contractions and abbreviations and of diacritics. The last chapter goes on to explain the proper way to handle titles, footnotes, references and bibliographies, and it also covers the punctuation of personal and business letters.
Since many people these days do most of their writing at a keyboard, and especially with a word processor, this book also explains the proper use of italics