Which is correct?
1. Vendors—including Apple, Google and Microsoft—all have their own versions of auto-correct programs and, as a result, their own particular auto-correct fails.

2. Vendors — including Apple, Google and Microsoft — usually have their own versions of auto-correct programs and, as a result, their own particular auto-correct fails.

Answer: It depends on your style.

Explanation:
AP style is to add spaces around the em dash; Chicago style is without spaces. What happened yesterday? I found a source that seemed authoritative and went with it. But that source was following the Chicago Manual of Style. We’re (mostly) Team AP.

See AP vs. Chicago on em dashes and ellipses. Now there’s a blog for a fake grammarian to bookmark.

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2. Vendors — including Apple, Google and Microsoft — usually have their own versions of auto-correct programs and, as a result, their own particular auto-correct fails.

Answer: 1.

Explanation:
In today’s post, I’m learning right along with some of you. As you may or may not know, I’m not really a grammarian—I just play one on the Internet. I realized only recently, though, that I’d also been playing fast and loose with my punctuation. Yes, I remember as if it were only last week… it was Punctuation Day and a number of people had tweeted about en dashes and em dashes. I thought to myself, well, as a fake grammarian, I really should at least know that I’m using these correctly. Turns out I wasn’t. Although Word helpfully converts two hyphens typed together (which is what I was using) into an em dash, em dashes are correctly used without spaces and I had been using them—quite freely, I might add—with spaces either side. I know better now!

CuteWriting explains the uses of hyphens, en dashes and em dashes.

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The National Punctuation Day website provides standard punctuation and information about each item.

Wikipedia has an interesting entry on punctuation and some related entries about non-standard punctuation. Maybe teacher never told you, but there are punctuation marks that haven’t gone mainstream, although maybe they should. See that exclamation point/question mark image to the left (and also after the first sentence)? It’s the interrobang, a single character that indicates that the question is asked in an excited manner. So much more elegant than separate punctuation, especially if multiples are used.

Martin K. Speckter invented the interrobang in 1962. Speckter, who was the head of an ad agency, thought that ads would look a lot better with a single character to display both enthusiasm and inquisitiveness. He was right! Although the interrobang has never become standard-issue punctuation, it’s there for you to use, in the Wingdings font.

And then there’s the irony mark. Alcanter de Brahm, a French poet, promoted this backwards question mark  in the 19th century and various proponents have campaigned for it since. It’s never caught on though, and that has led to a great deal of ambiguity.

Surely the world would be a better place if we signaled our ironic statements clearly ؟

Go ahead — celebrate National Punctuation Day with some new punctuation. Enjoy it responsibly!

See more punctuation-related posts here.

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a. It’s a birthday greeting for Besse Cooper. She is the oldest person in the world and she turned 116 today.
b. It’s a birthday greeting for Besse Cooper. She is the oldest person in the world and she is the eldest of some unspecified number of people who all turned 116 today.

Answer: b.

Explanation:
Besse Cooper actually turned 116 yesterday and the greeting went out on Twitter. You need to add a comma after “person” to indicate that “who turned 116 today” modifies Besse Cooper. The comma is what indicates a parenthetical phrase, so that the sentence means “Besse Cooper turned 116 today. She is the world’s oldest person.”

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Explanation:
The trend is increasingly toward shorter and more straightforward sentences, which usually don’t require advanced punctuation. However, colons and semicolons can make your meaning clearer.

Both colons and semicolons can be used to unite two independent clauses — parts of a sentence that could stand as complete sentences on their own. “The bottom line for disaster recovery is the same for both large enterprises and SMBs” and “They need to stay in business” could each stand alone. Using a semicolon to unite the two clauses would indicate that those two ideas were more closely linked than if you made them separate sentences.

So why would you use a colon instead? Because a colon adds additional meaning about HOW those ideas are linked. It indicates that the first part of the sentence introduces the idea in the second or that the second part of the sentence explains the first.

The University of Victoria Writing Centre provides a simple introduction to colons and semicolons.

I’ve worked with writers who were very fond of semicolons for their arcane allure but didn’t know how to use them. The impression was that they’d randomly sprinkled semicolons throughout their text. If you don’t have a clear grasp of how to use advanced punctuation, you should avoid it. On the other hand, if you’d like to refine your writing, the rules are available. Learn and follow the rules and use colons and semicolons judiciously.

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Answer: a.

Explanation:
An ellipsis is a sequence of three dots used to indicate that something continues, or sometimes to indicate that something — like a thought — has trailed off. The plural of “ellipsis” is “ellipses.”

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b. The iconic singer, Madonna, tweeted for the very first time in March 2012.

Answer: a
When Madonna is set off by commas (and goodness knows, it seems like just about anything might set her off), the sentence means that there is only one iconic singer, and her name is Madonna. The thing about tweeting like a Twitter virgin in March 2012? True — Madonna joined Twitter in March to promote her new album. I suppose there’s a reason they call her the material girl, not the digital girl.

Another example:

a. The storage expert, Arun Taneja, recommends a very careful reading of cloud storage provider contracts before signing.
b. The storage expert Arun Taneja recommends a very careful reading of cloud storage provider contracts before signing.

Here’s how Ben Yagoda explains this type of comma error in his article in the New York Times, The Most Comma Mistakes:

I went to see the movie, “Midnight in Paris” with my friend, Jessie.

Comma after “movie,” comma after “friend” and, sometimes, comma after “Paris” as well. None are correct — unless “Midnight in Paris” is the only movie in the world and Jessie is the writer’s only friend. Otherwise, the punctuation should be:

I went to see the movie “Midnight in Paris” with my friend Jessie.

If that seems wrong or weird or anything short of clearly right, bear with me a minute and take a look at another correct sentence:

I went to see Woody Allen’s latest movie, “Midnight in Paris,” with my oldest friend, Jessie.

You need a comma after “movie” because this and only this is Mr. Allen’s newest movie in theaters, and before “Jessie” because she and only she is the writer’s oldest friend.

The syntactical situation I’m talking about is identifier-name… > Continue reading

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This is one of my favorite types of comma errors because it’s the one behind fun sentences like “I’d like to thank my parents, God and Whoopi Goldberg.” What do you need to fix that sentence? The Oxford comma. Love it or hate it, sometimes you’ve just got to use it to make yourself understood.

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Check out the video to see how to win friends and influence people with your mad punctuation skills. Too bad about the disabled Led Zeppelin track, though…

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/7T9kGGZn19w" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Answer: Either, depending on location.

Explanation:
In the U.S., periods (and commas) always go inside quotation marks; in the U.K., they usually go outside.

Writers Block explains the finer points of U.S. and British differences. Here’s an excerpt:

In the American style, periods and commas are always placed inside the quotation marks, for typographical reasons. In the British style, periods and commas are placed inside the quotation marks only when they are part of the quoted material, which is the more logical placement.

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Explanation:
In a list of complex items, the semicolon helps clarity by clearly identifying the separate items in the list — that’s why it’s used instead of a comma between the items, as well as why it’s used along with the conjunction and before the last item. The general rule is to use a semicolon to separate list items if one of your items already contains a comma and to use one before the conjunction if the items are complex.

Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty offers more information about the uses of semicolons.

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