Tech Biz Writing

Question mark
a) The question mark is used after every direct question: “Will you?” It is followed by a capital letter. It is not required for indirect questions: “They asked me why I had done it.”

Exclamation mark
A rag-bag of a mark, which most editors dislike as it has an amateurish quality about it. However, it is used quite a lot in a variety of guises. We can’t cover them all here, but essentially it expresses surprise, astonishment, large emphasis. It should never be used more than once adjacently since a gentleman is never that surprised about anything!

Apostrophe
Another contentious issue: in today’s educational climate apostrophes are often dropped, especially by sign-writers. Unfortunately this trend has been passed down to many of our school children who may well grow up in a world without them. They are used to show the possessive case, e.g.: “John’s book”. In the plural it goes outside the “s”: “The girls’ cases”. But, “Jesus’s parable”. There is a growing tendency to drop the final “s” in the latter case, though this is an ugly construct in speech. “Jesus parable” is now commonly heard, even among clerics. Lazy speech and texts are all around us. It can cause ambiguity, so be careful whichever method you choose.

Dashes
The hyphen is the best-known of the dashes by far, and to prove it we have just used one. Its utility is extensive, but the rules for its use are sometimes vague. For editing professionals, however, the difference between it and two other dashes are essential knowledge. The en and em dashes are the preserve of compositors, printers and copyeditors. We will examine the hyphen first:

a) Hyphen connect words that are closer in usage than the rest of the syntax. There are no hard and fast rules which apply here, e.g.: motor cycle, but motorway, and motor-cyclist. It’s just a matter of convention in most cases.

Just to be awkward, the New Oxford Dictionary of English drops all the hyphens from its list of motor words. So, motorbike and motor car are given, but motor-cyclist is given as motorcyclist. Why should those people over at OUP be more right than anyone else? You’re on your own, I’m afraid. It’s all a matter of taste.

But to be consistent with current usage it’s probably just as well to use a single authority, such as the NOD. The American tendency to draw two words together in one is gaining ascendancy and will probably be the norm before long. Not so very long ago we used, to-day as standard. It looks rather odd now unless you read a lot of books written before the last war.

Nouns made up from phrasal verbs — verb + adverb — tend to be more predictable… but not always: set-back, but feedback, for example. Words which are used in American usage more than British English will almost always appear as a joined up word/phrase.

Perhaps the most predictable are various collocations which don’t have a hyphen normally, but which are hyphenated when used as an adjective. J.B. Priestley’s “A tremendous wrapping-up-and-throwing-away gesture.” is an extreme example. The difference is illustrated by “The twenty-first century.” But, “Twenty-first-century blues.”

The Oxford guides give page after page of examples. If you wish to become a hyphen-geek, or even a Hyphen Geek, or perhaps a hyphengeek, please feel free to consult these excellent tomes. Right now we’ll move on to a more interesting aspect of dash science, the en and the em.

b) The en rule differs from the hyphen in that it joins words when movement or opposition is meant. It often substitutes for to, as in: “The 1939–45 war”, or versus, as in “The Chelsea–Leeds match”.

But, if a joint position is mean, then: “The Chelsea-Leeds proposal” has a hyphen. For joint authors, Smith–Evans, an en is right. For a double-barrelled name, Smith-Evans, a hyphen. The difference in print: - (hyphen), – (en). The en is slightly longer. The em, which we will come to next, is longer again: —

c) The em rule marks an interruption in a sentence’s structure, either singly or, as a parenthetical pair: “I don’t think —though you may disagree with me — that it’s the right answer.”

Quotation marks
These enclose quotations of direct speech. Modern usage is for single quotation marks, rather than double, but the old system is still in use in some newspapers and books — as well as this course.
In a case like: ‘“That’s great,” she said,’ the comma after great is regarded as a full stop.

Quotation marks, enclosing roman type, are usually used for chapters of books, titles of articles in periodicals, poems, not published separately, &c.
Titles of whole books and periodicals are usually printed in italic type.

Parentheses
Are used to enclose:
a) Definitions, special authorities, references, translations &c.

b) Remarks made directly by the writer: “Binky (as I always called him) rang the bell.”

c) Interruptions to a speech, by an audience, for example.

d) To left, instead of a full stop.

e) Words which are optional to the sentence: “There are (seemingly) a lot of problems.”

f) Square brackets [ ] enclose corrections, comments, interpolations (by an editor, for example), notes or translations, which are not in the original text.

Punctuation is an essential conveyor of meaning, and adds considerable sophistication and flexibility to a text. Used properly, and with care, it bestows cadence and elegance to any piece of writing. Even technical writers, who are not known for their exquisite prose style, can increase the authority of their work — and their reputation — by a good knowledge of the art of punctuation.

Next 62. Creating texts - Part 1

This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Technical Writing, TechBiz Writing, Documentation, Editing, Technical Editing, Punctuation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.