Thanks, everyone. According to The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style: With other punctuation Put commas and periods inside closing quotation marks; put colons and semicolons outside. Other punctuation, such as exclamation

Jingtian, The New York Times style book says: periods and commas, in American usage, always go inside the closing quotation marks, regardless of grammatical logic. Another source gives this example: ...two complete thoughts joined by

FIVE WAYS TO CORRECT RUN-ON SENTENCES 1. PERIOD AND CAPITAL LETTER 2. COMMA AND FANBOYS CONJUCTION 3. SEMICOLON 4. SEMICOLON AND JOINING WORD 5. DEPENDANT WORD In each sentence underline the spot where each run-on or comma splice

The word "then" is a conjunctive adverb. When it separates independent clauses, it should be preceded with a semicolon (;) and usually followed by a comma (,). With most conjunctive adverbs--such as "however" and

Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884, in New York City. She was the first of six children born by Anna Hall and Elliot Roosevelt . (This sentence implies that Elliot also gave birth. This is very unlikely.) She was the oldest of Anna

. Neither is correct, actually, since both need a semicolon instead of a comma. After that correction, #1 is grammatically correct, while #2 would be OK for e-English: it is a sort of telegraph style. .

In reference to a discussion about martial arts forms, this statement was made. "Which hand is in front; I think it's the right." Is this improper use of a semicolon? Should the sentence have been separated into individual thoughts?

It should be used sparingly for stylistic purposes , that is, to introduce an emphatic, short sentence. Parenthetical elements of a sentence can be removed with the essential meaning of the sentence remaining. Appositives are always deemed as

Hi, this is an old question, but as it is the first google hit for this subject, here's a quick answer: However, if you look for an answer... If you look for a quick answer , however, look no further. Also there seems to be a new trend of

Hi, Clive, Firstly, I may sound slightly pedantic in that I always put forth stupid rules rather than being flexible and giving my own opinion on the matter. However, I do prefer conforming with the rules simply because I see innumerable