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Jim, the Captain of the Enterprise, usually fell in love with an alien princess; and, by the end of the show, she usually tried to kill him.
When you've got two independent clauses whacked together in one sentence without a conjunction, most people will make the mistake of using a comma. I'm terribly fond of that error, myself. Sometimes, in prose, we just don't want the conjunction in there because it doesn't give the sentence the right feel or sound. Commonly and wrongly, a writer will just forgo the conjunction and stick in a period. Wrong-o. Use the semi-colon. It stands in for and, but, therefore, or, and whatnot. Here's a few examples to sink your teeth into:
Sandra loved to orgasm; unfortunately for her man, she loved to orgasm with Sue.
Mack was often confused with a truck; the truck generally knew what was going on.
Finally, you can use the semi-colon just because you don't want to use the comma. Why on earth would we want to do that? Sometimes you just want to stick a pause in the sentence that's a breath longer than a comma, but shorter than a period. A semi-colon will do that for you. Most people, well, they just don't.
These two are really pretty self-explanatory. If you have a sentence that's a question, you whack a question mark at the end instead of a period and call it good. If it's got some exclamatory zing to it, you use the exclamation point. But what if you've got a few questions in one sentence? What if you've got a sentence that's really, really strong? Like someone's orgasming? Well, in porno we frequently see these two marks highly misused. Hence, the subject heading.
A question mark doesn't necessarily mean that the sentence is over. Some sentences question multiple things, and in those instances, you can use a question mark after each one. This particular rule is pretty handy when you have to deal with quotation marks. You don't see this very often outside of quotation marks, but you can do it. Here's an example to illustrate:
One thing to remember with question marks and exclamation points is that you only use one with each sentence. A question mark and an exclamation point is just a cue to the reader, it doesnot describe what's happening. “She ate what??????" has the same meaning as “She ate what?" “He came!!!!!!!!!!" has the exact same implication as “He came!" Multiple question marks and exclamation points are the hallmark of an amateur writer, and you will not find a market that will accept them. Next time you're reading something you paid for, take a look. One question mark or exclamation point per person! If the extra emphasis is that necessary, use words to describe it, not punctuation.
There are two uses of the quotation marks: direct quotation and indirect quotation. There are also two types of marks used to demarcate quotations: single quotation marks and quotation marks. Finally, there are some conventions regarding the use of other punctuation with quotation marks.
What qualifies as quotation marks depends on where in the world you learned English. There are two correct marks. The American version, the double quotations marks, and the British version, the single quotation marks. Which version you use depends on which language set you're using. If you use double quotations marks, do not use British spelling. If you use single quotation marks, do not use American spelling. The key here is to keep the document consistent. In places like Literotica, you don't have to worry about which standard to use since they happily accept both. However, if you intend to write for something else, you must verify the writer's guidelines prior to submission.
Note: Most languages have their own conventions for marking quotations. They usually aren't quotation marks. Some of the English writers will maintain their native punctuation when writing in English. They will use things like a hyphen (-) or double angle brackets (<<>>). This is incorrect and if you're a non-native English writer, you should restrain yourself. Each language has its own unique cues to the reader and clarity is the issue. You want to maintain clarity when you write so you may be understood. That means using English standard punctuation when writing in English.
A direct quotation is what you'll find most often in fiction writing, or in the writing around here. You're directly quoting your characters' speech. Nothing too fancy with that, you just stick the quotation marks around the speech.
“Hi, Judy."
‘What's happening?'
‘Nothing much.'
Notes: You always capitalize the first word of the direct quotation, no matter where it falls in the sentence.
And indirect quotation is where you don't actually come right and quote, exactly. You can use the exact words; but if you refer to the speech rather than use the speech, then you aren't quoting it. It's difficult to explain, but indirect quotes are normally preceded by the word that. He said that time is money. He asked us where he could find the bakery. He told the dog to stay put. Don't use quotation marks. You'll notice that in two of the examples, “he asked us" and “he told the dog", that I used attributives—said words. This would ordinarily mean that you use quotation marks. How is this different? These examples are indirect quotations because the object of the attributive (verb) isn't the quotation; it's something else. He said, “Run along." He told us to run along. Same thing, sort of. In the first, “Run along" is the object of the verb. In the second, run along, is the object of a preposition, to. The object of told, the attributive, is us.
How do you use quotation marks when there's more to the sentence than just the quote? What about question marks? Good questions! First, let's talk about a sentence where some of the words are inside quotations marks and some are outside of the marks. The most common is a quotation with an attributive. Unless the quotation is a question or exclamation, you will always end it with a comma. It does not matter if it's the end of the quoted speech or not, you will still use a comma. You will put the period at the end of the sentence itself. Also, you will not capitalize the words that follow the quoted speech within the sentence. You will capitalize the first word of the quotation no matter where it falls in the sentence, but not the other way around. This is not true of the question mark or the exclamation point, but more on that in a moment. Here are some examples for you:
“No," she replied.
“Why," he asked, “not?"
‘Because," she explained, “I don't want to.'
He snapped, “Oh, just do it."
She said, “I will not."
Note the positions of the commas in both types of examples. The comma comes between the quotation and the rest of the sentence.
What about question marks and exclamation points? These are a bit different. When you pose a question in a quotation, you end that quotation with a question mark; don't capitalize anything in the sentence that follows, and end the sentence with a period. The exclamation is the same. If the quotation is at the end of the sentence, you put a comma between it and the rest of the sentence and end the entire thing with a question mark, quotation marks on the outside. Confused? Here are a few examples to show the way:
She replied, ‘Twenty bucks okay?'
“Twenty!" he screamed.
She yelled, “Go beat off then!"
Sometimes we have quotations that aren't speech. We quote the names of titles, or we have words that you are referring to, but not indirectly quoting. Sometimes, we put slang into quotation marks. When using these types of quotations, you should not use commas. Here's some examples to help you out:
Did he just say “Nice shoes, wanna fuck" to me?
Yesterday, she told me to ‘take a hike'.
People often misspell ‘pastime'.
The last examples bring up a sticky situation, don't they? Where do you put other punctuation in these instances? Outside of the quotation marks. It doesn't matter what sort or where these quoted phrases are placed in the sentence, the additional punctuation goes outside of the quotation marks. In America, however, it has become somewhat acceptable to put the punctuation inside of the quotation marks. It's not strictly correct, but it's in popular usage. Just look in the dictionary, you'll find “ain't" is in there, too. Outside of America, this is utterly incorrect.
You use apostrophes for two things, possessives and contractions. If you've got either of these things, there is going to be an apostrophe around somewhere. Well, except in a couple of cases.
Possessives are nouns that possess something. If Mike has a ball, you can have Mike possess the ball simply by saying “Mike's ball". Now if Phyllis owns the ball, it's a little bit different. Phyllis can possess the ball in two ways, both are correct. It can be “Phyllis's ball" or it can be “Phyllis' ball". It all depends on how you want to say it.
Now, if you have several somethings that are in possession, then the rules alter lightly. If the Johnsons own the ball, then it's “the Johnsons' ball". It can never be “the Johnsons's ball". Plural possessives will always have a single apostrophe at the end of the plural. The horses' hay. The cows' fodder. The farmers' meeting. Why not the farmers's meeting like Phyllis got to do? Because it sounds silly. Say it out loud. You actually couldn't say Phyllis's a while ago, but that's changed in the past few years.
Contractions are simple enough. As speakers, we slur everything. We don't say “do not" when we can say “don't". The apostrophe goes wherever you omitted letters. In don't, you can see the “o" was omitted and an apostrophe was put in its place. You'll notice that there is no spacing between the letters and the apostrophe.
Special cases:
Some possessives and contractions are backwards. It's hard to keep up, but these are generally pronouns. Take the word “it" for example. "It's" is actually “it is". "Its" is the possessive. Backwards, huh? "Who's" is who is and whose is possessive. If there are any other cases beyond the pronoun world where this is true, I can't remember them at the moment. Generally speaking, if the pronoun's possessive doesn't have its own unique spelling, e.g. theirs, his, hers, then it will have no apostrophe.
What about slurring with regular nouns? What if the author was slurring “The farmer is young" into “The farmer's young"? Well, then slur it just like you would anything else. Put in an apostrophe. Do not use this in the narrative. The only place where you'd find this acceptable is within quotations where the speaker is speaking phonetically.
The dash is one of my favorite pieces of punctuation—though I didn't use it very often here. A dash indicates an abrupt change of thought—which I do with astonishing frequency. It also indicates, in quotations, an abrupt end to the speech. One way to think of it is that it highlights parenthetical phrases, just like the comma does.
A parenthetical expression is just a word or group of words that really don't have much to do with the sentence itself, but you think it's important to be there. Parenthetical phrases and clauses of other varieties are more difficult to pinpoint in discussion. The only real way to tell if the phrase is parenthetical is to remove it. If the sentence makes perfect sense without it, use some dashes when you stick it in. Yeah, I ripped it straight from the comma section. Here are a few examples to help you out:
How many times do I have to tell you—thirty-nine at last count—that I'm busy!
How can you tell when to use a dash instead of a comma? It's basically a matter of degree and a matter of flow. A dash indicates a high level of disruption. It actually stops the reader's eye for a moment because it's such an unusual piece of punctuation. If the parenthetical is very special or it has very little to do with the sentence, then use the dash. If you're doing an aside and speaking directly to the reader as the writer, use parentheses (covered in Section. 9). All others, “soft" parenthetical phrases, use commas.
Sometimes one of your characters is going to get cut off abruptly in mid-sentence or mid-word. How to punctuate? Use the dash! Just lop off whatever you don't need, stick in a dash, add the quotation marks, and you're good to go. You don't even have to explain that it was lopped off because we already know. Here are some examples:
“Let's go have some dinner, Marsha."
“I don't want—"
“I think Italian."
“Quit interrupting me!"
How to use the dash: Dashes aren't hyphens. They're actually one long line or two hyphens typed closely together. Most word processors will automatically convert two hyphens to dashes for you, however, when you put these into most web pages, the dashes will be converted to hyphens again. To solve that problem, you have to go through and verify that your dashes are two hyphens or use the HTML character entity for the dash. You'll also notice, in the examples, that there were no spaces between the dash and the letters surrounding it.
What are ellipses marks? They are three periods in a row with spaces between. (. . .) Ellipses get their name from the word elliptical. They indicate that something has been omitted or removed. You frequently see these or strings of periods resembling these in the stories on the site. These strings of periods are neither proper punctuation nor proper grammar. There is a common misconception that strings of periods bring some sort of tone to the story, breathiness, slower cadence, whatever. This is actually not so. The conventions for these marks are well respected in most writing so the reader does not have an instinctive cue about how to take a bunch of periods in the middle of prose. Ellipses are not used in conventional narrative, only within quotations.
Ellipses are used in two ways: one, to indicate an omission in a quotation, and two, to indicate that a character's speech has been cut off, but not abruptly. Faded out, as it were, with some words omitted.
When you want to quote someone, but you don't want to stick in everything they said (cause sometimes they do ramble on), you can remove those words and replace them with ellipses. If the ellipses happen in the beginning or the middle of a sentence, then there are three dots with a space between each and after the last. If they happen at the end of the sentence, then you have three dots with a space between and after the last, then closing punctuation, usually a period. (. . . .) or (. . . ?) or (. . . ,) or (. . . !) There are no more or less than three dots in the ellipses, unless the final punctuation is a period. How does this work? Let's take a few famous quotes and chop them down:
“Madam, if you. . . I would drink it." -Churchill
“I like Mr. Gorbachev. . . ." -Thatcher
Stories generally don't contain a lot of quotes from other people. Normally, they just have characters speaking. Sometimes the characters don't finish whatever it is they're saying. They don't really end the sentence, so you can't put in final punctuation and they don't cut off abruptly so a dash is out of the question. Since their words have beenomitted you can use the ellipses. Here's how that works:
“Marsha, I. . . ."
“John. . . ?"
A quick recap. There are only three, spaced dots in the ellipses. Everything else is wrong. You use ellipses only to indicate omission. Everything else is wrong. If the omission is at the end of the sentence, you use whatever final punctuation is necessary for the sentence.
There are four pieces of punctuation that won't take a lot of time and you really won't see in your writing very often. Or anyone else's if you're lucky. The hyphen (-), the parentheses ( ), the ampersand (&) and the colon (:).
Hyphens
They're used for two things. One is to cut a word off at the end of a line. This was done mostly back when people used typewriters and didn't have to deal with transferring a document from one application to another. Don't do this unless you're putting it on paper directly from your word-processor. Why not? Lines break at different locations depending on what your document is being opened with. 12 point Times New Roman breaks differently on Word 2000 than 12 point Times New Roman breaks in Wordpad. It doesn't break at all in Notepad. Going from a word processor to a webpage? Just don't do it. The other is to hook up a set of words that you're using as a single word. People do that? Get out of town, Muff! No, really, they do that. Here are some examples:
My father-in-law was a no-good, born-again, son-of-a-bitch, but I loved him.
Hey, good-looking!
Parentheses
Sometimes you just want to say something parenthetical when you're writing. You've got a few choices, the comma and the dash are two. The parentheses, naturally, are an option. You can use them any time you stick some words in the sentence that disrupt it or are an abrupt change in idea. Conventionally, people use the parentheses to indicate an aside, that is, a spot in the prose where the author speaks directly to the reader. You don't have to do this, there's no rule about it; it's just what people have taken to doing frequently enough to make it seem normal to the reader. If you're punctuating with parentheses, the final punctuation goes on the outside when they occur within a sentence and on the inside when they occur around an entire sentence. Take a look at these examples:
Dick slapped Jane before she could swing the bat. (You can tell these two love each other.)
Ampersand
It's a funny thing. Unless you're having some severely informal communication between close friends or you're writing poetry, don't use it. An ampersand is unusual enough in informal writing that sticking it in there will jar your reader. That's the last thing you want. Anything that calls attention to itself is bad. If you're writing for more than one reader, don't use ampersands. Don't use the @ symbol for at. Don't use shorthanded cuts like u instead of you. It's sloppy writing and it's going to get you taken less seriously. Is there a correct way to use an ampersand? Just replace any and you find. It's interchangeable with the word, but, please, restrain yourself. And has just one more keystroke, you know?
Colon
This is another piece of punctuation that you just don't see that much. Generally you use it in front of a list of things or details. It's the strongest break that you can put into a sentence without using a period. Most of us don't even use semi-colons with any degree of regularity (I am trying really, really,really hard to not use any colostomy bag references and this is just not helping) let alone a whole colon. So, how do you use it? Whenever you're going to make a list of things. Here are a few examples (starting with this one):
