By Colons, Punctuation

In the following example: “-I drove to Zhuhai for a visit last week. -Is that _______ you had a few days off?” A. What B. When C. Why D. Where I would say D) Where but according to my book, the answer is C) Why. Actually, I would also consider B) to be the...

Hi, My English teacher has reached out of the bowels of hell and given me and a friend a project: we have to make a video project on commas in direct address.I have searched through the internet and have found little to help give a good explanation. If someone could tell me the rules for this......

1. The comma is correct; it's the convention for dialogue punctuation in fiction. I suppose this holds true for film-quotes, too.2. Generally, there are two ways to treat "Dirty Hairy" (shouldn't this be "Dirty Harry"?):Apposition: ...in Clint Eastwood's 1971 film, Dirty Hairy, ... (what you did...

Taka wrote: Bokeh wrote:The problem for me is the punctuation which is certainly not English and therefore is very confusing to a native English speaker.Surprising!You native speakers will see such dashes as wrong? How come??My reaction exactly! Granted your dashes were a bit long, but what...

The former is correct. No capitalization. You might note that the problem arises only with ! and ?. Periods (full stops), colons or semicolons would not be used in this situation, but would be replaced by commas.

Thanks Barbara, I seached for "comma splice" on the Internet after I saw your reply and consulted a book on punctuation (By Oxford University Press). What I understood is "comma splice" is a common error that most of the people often make. The book said "It's not normally correct to join the...

Philip wrote: Inchoateknowledge wrote: All the test animals, therefore, were reexamined. -- no All the test animals; therefore, were reexamined. --yes Punctuation is often a matter of rethoric and taste. But there are also general rules. A semicolon just doesn't work: it must be used...

I'm sure that Cathy's post would read much clearer as exemplified in the following: In our modern day, the written English in many of the visual forms that we see from day to day, reflects more of our conversational use of the language and its punctuation; also appears to follow the way that we...

Inchoateknowledge wrote: All the test animals, therefore, were reexamined. -- no All the test animals; therefore, were reexamined. --yes Punctuation is often a matter of rethoric and taste. But there are also general rules.A semicolon just doesn't work: it must be used between two...

Yes, the original sentence was incorrect, but I do not agree with Timbo's answer as for the correct semicolon usage and the punctuation for the two sentences, i.e. two completely different thoughts, both with an independent subjext and verb. The correct way of making these two statements and...