Punctuation time, come on!

We're gonna punctuate and have a good time

The Oxford/serial comma is the third rail of punctuation, and I’ve made my irrefutable views crystal clear. Read before you leap.

But there are some other rules that I have for you punctuation punks out there.

Source: Story and art

• I spell out every word in texts, and I use proper punctuation. Even in voice texts. I don’t care how old that makes me look. I can’t stand any brand of English that uses “u” instead of “you.”

• Many writers, even journalists, have become more liberal (or more lazy) about starting sentences with numbers. Take this sentence from a Wednesday article about the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the Los Angeles Times.
  
  ”$125 million of the public-private partnership for the controversial new building comes from Los Angeles County taxpayer funds.”

I want zero part of this. Zero is the part of this I want.

• Here’s another big one: possessives ending in “s.” Is it “Carlos’ blimp” or “Carlos’s blimp?”

  • I understand the notion of writing the way it sounds, and the way it would sound in general is “Carlos’s blimp.”

  • However, “Carlos’s blimp” is just killer on my eyes, and given the options, I simply can’t get on board with it. I am forever Team Carlos’ blimp.

  • Heaven help me, however, if you ever write “Carlo’s blimp,” I will drown you.

  • If I find out that the person’s actual name is Carlo, I will resuscitate you.

  • There is also a fundamental difference for plural nouns. Never say “the girls’s room.”

  • However, when “girls” is generic, such as in describing a bathroom for a specific group of young people, “girls room” with no apostrophe is the way to go.

• 1) Veterans Day vs. 2) Veteran’s Day vs. 3) Veterans’ Day.

  • I feel it’s a day for all veterans, so while you can make a case for “Veteran’s Day,” that’s not my recommendation.

  • I tend to use “Dodger baseball” as a barometer for whether I need an apostrophe or not. (Dodger is an adjective in this case. What kind of baseball is it time for? Dodger baseball.)

  • However, “Veteran Day” is off the table. No one’s buying into that.

  • Consequently, my first choice would be “Veterans Day,” with no apostrophe.” I believe that is the agreed-upon format.

  • That said, I don’t feel dogmatic about this one. So I’m willing to let Veterans’ Day slide.

• Major pet peeve alert: the scourge of the backward apostrophe. Be careful about them. Be scrupulous.
  
  David Halberstam wrote a book called Summer of ’49. However, auto-correct thinks I’m typing the beginning of a quotation, so it will give me Summer of ‘49. Take care to fix this.
  
  In case that isn’t clear, here’s an easy-to-understand graphic.

  Jon Weisman @jonweisman

  The scourge of the backward apostrophe dodgerthoughts.com/2019/06/03/the…

  

• Backward or backwards? Toward or towards? Drop the “s,” I say.

• The combination of question marks and quotemarks is surprisingly tricky.

  • The baseline rule is that the question mark goes inside the quotemarks. For example: “Do you know the way to San Jose?” Easy.

  • However, this structure sometimes trips people up:
    
    “Do you know the way to San Jose?” Tony asked.
    
    Some folks have a real urge to sneak a comma in there after the question mark. Don’t.

  • Now here’s one that really splits the crowd: What happens when, for instance, you want to know if someone has read a certain book?
    
    Is it:

    1. “Have you read To Kill a Mockingbird?”

    2. “Have you read To Kill a Mockingbird”?

    
    The way I was taught, you would use Option 1 — the question mark never goes after quotemarks. However, I have seen people make convincing arguments for Option 2, so that it doesn’t appear that the question mark is part of the title.
    
    Those people have a case, but I dislike how that second option appears. I think the chance of confusion is minimal if you keep the question mark on the inside looking out.

• When do you use a comma between two clauses in a sentence? The rule is to do so if there are two clauses that could stand on their own.
  
  Side note: I hate semicolons. No, really, I do. I will always go with a long dash — and to be clear, not a hyphen — where a semicolon might be called for.
  
  So these are all viable choices:

  • Jonny went to the Dodger game, and he got a great parking space.

  • Jonny went to the Dodger game and got a great parking space.

  • Jonny went to the Dodger game — he got a great parking space.

  • But don’t do this: Jonny went to the Dodger game, and got a great parking space.

• What about capital letters after colons? Use a capital letter if you have a complete sentence after a colon. Otherwise, keep it lower case.

  • Here’s an example: Ichiro tossed out singles like kale chips from a hot air balloon.

  • Here’s another example: kale chips from a hot air balloon.

• You do not need to use a hyphen after an adverb. For example, if you start to write “eagerly-anticipated,” lose that hyphen immediately.

• Last one, just for fun. I asked about this in February on Twitter: What is the deal with the British using an “s” after “math” but no “s” after “sport?”
  
  One respondent gave me a succinct reply: “Mathematics, not sportmatics.” I found that so convincing, I’m thisclose to switching to “maths” and “sport” myself.

I sure hope I proofread the above sufficiently.