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Punctuation's Most Wanted
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Published: 2008-01-03 06:52:22 +0000 UTC; Views: 55651; Favourites: 2340; Downloads: 1554
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Description
(Bloody hell, what category does this thing belong in?)So ~BrookeTheVampire asks, "...a page dedicated to use of punctuation would help out. I still have trouble sometimes with colons and semicolons, and it's always nice for someone to be able to find that out all in one spot!"
Well, BrookeTheVampire, ask and ye shall receive! This is the Punctuation Gang's Most Wanted list, all your favorite evil punctuation on one handy reference poster!
The display version above is designed to be viewed on-screen; however, there is also a downloadable "full" version , designed to be appropriate for printing at poster-size.
If you're having trouble with punctuation, this is (hopefully) a handy answer to your questions.
Related content
Comments: 295
Go right ahead! Lord knows there's more than enough bad grammar and spelling and punctuation out there already, so if you can nip some of it in the bud, please do it.
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Well, I must say this is the most creative way to introduce people to the basics of punctuation. Nice job.
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I wish I had something this entertaining on my wall as child learning grammar!
Very entertaining and informative.
Love it!
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A very creative way of grammar education. 
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oh my...i consider this to be genius ^ ^
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Thanks muchly ^_^
If it repairs even one lonely misplaced comma, I've done my job.
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Haha, this is really cute and helpful. I'm adding this to my official list of resources. I think lots of young writers will find it useful.
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Thanks muchly for featuring this in your journal! Here's hoping people will finally understand what the heck a semicolon is supposed to be used for.
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three cheers. glad to know we're not alone out here in nerdland.
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Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!
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This is gorgeous. You've managed to create a guide to punctuation that is both hilarious and helpful. I'm also glad it's not mean spirited toward those who make these mistakes, as some other guides are. In my opinion, it deserves far more recognition then it has gotten.
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Thanks, I'm glad you liked it so much! Use it and reference it all you want, and if it contributes to removing even one grammar error from the global English corpus, it was definitely worth the effort.
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Heh. Heh. Hehehehe--*bursts out laughing*
This is great!! Absolutely perfect for instruction, and lots of fun as well...you ought to be an English teacher...
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Wonderful work! I shall have to spend some time studying this, as I do a fair amount of writing and editing of said writing. This should prove most helpful!
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This is both informative and hilarious!
But I don't understand why a . and a ? would be used before '' ''s.
Nevertheless very clever stuff!
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That particular rule I've always had complaints with, but it is what it is:
Correct: John said, "Hello, Sally."
Incorrect: John said, "Hello, Sally".
Correct: John asked, "Is Sally going to the store?"
Incorrect: John asked, "Is Sally going to the store"?
Correct: "What are you doing?" asked Sally.
Incorrect: "What are you doing"? asked Sally.
Worse: "What are you doing" asked Sally?
Those are easy cases, where the answer is straightforward and obvious. The correctness is less obvious, however, when definitions or technical terms are involved:
Grammatically correct but dead wrong in meaning (if you were to actually do what it says here, nothing would happen):
> When you see the command prompt, type "rm -rf *."
Grammatically incorrect but actually having meaning:
> When you see the command prompt, type "rm -rf *".
The placement of the punctuation makes all the difference in these. So the rule is what it is, but it's not the best rule ever devised.
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Now it makes sense! I thought that's what you meant but wasn't sure. It's a very fun and intelligent piece of work.
I've noticed people thinking it's odd when I place the . outside the '' '' when I'm ending a sentence with a quote, such as - ''A man walked up to me and said 'good morning''.' Bad example probably.
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No, that's a perfect example of exactly how not to do it.
Incorrect: A man walked up to me and said "good morning".
Correct: A man walked up to me and said, "Good morning."
Incorrect: I said to Sean, "A man walked up to me and said 'good morning'."
Correct: I said to Sean, "A man walked up to me and said, 'Good morning.'"
Note that the rules are slightly different in British English, in that double-quotation marks and single-quotation marks often have reversed usage:
Incorrect: I said to Sean, 'A man walked up to me and said "good morning".'
Correct: I said to Sean, 'A man walked up to me and said, "Good morning."'
In American/Canadian English, this is generally not considered acceptable. I don't know what the standard is in Australian English, but my guess is that it's likely to prefer the former rule over the latter.
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I'm no expert, but I think you have to keep in mind that even in a dialog you are still quoting, but you're quoting the whole sentence. So, when you're quoting "rm -rf *" you are not quoting a sentence of a conversation but a computer command, so I don't see how "rm -rf *." could ever be grammatically correct. If I say:
Caesar said "Alea iacta est" when he crossed the Rubicon.
there's no need for a period because I'm not quoting a sentence, but a phrase. Of course, if I wanted to quote the sentence, then it would be "Alea iacta est." It's no different from
Steve read the passage from "The Decameron" to Trudy.
except here we're quoting a title, so again, no period. It's all a question of what we're quoting.
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This is just adorable! (And educational!)
Thank you so much!
Have you ever considered coming to my school and teaching all of the English teachers how to be creative, fun, and educational all at the same time?
Thanks again!
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Very Clever. This gang still occasionally trips me up.
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Most modern writing avoids that symbol and just uses "!?" instead.
...not that that symbol was ever used much before anyway. This is the most wanted list, not the least wanted
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...What the fuck? 
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Thank you for putting this together. This humorous look at punctuation marks will be invaluable for grammatical novices and masters alike.
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Glad you liked it! It wasn't too hard, and it's grown quite popular in the last day or so!
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You have a typographical error in the description of #7 Apostrophe.
In your sample, you have the usage for the possessive 's and s' reversed.
The correct usage for this greedy possessive puncuation mark is to use 's for most words that do not end in the letter S, for example: men's, John's, Emily's and girl's. You use the naked ' after words that normally end in the letter S, for example: the boys' (more than one boy owns it), ladies' (more than one lady owns it).
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Nuts. You're right. I swapped those by accident when I was doing the last proofreading.
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No problem, it happens to the best of us. Keep up the excellent work, we need all the help we can get when it comes to puncuation and grammer.
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...More help you probably don't need, but nevertheless:
*Punctuation
*Grammar
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I don't suppose anyone would believe that I did that on purpose... right?
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Ya velcome. By the way, both commas in your previous message are grammar errors: They should be colons, followed by two spaces and an initial capital letter. With commas, you have not one but two run-on sentences. :/
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As I said, "we can use all the help we can get."
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