punctuation – Page 3 – ChanteSez.com

It’s illegal in the U.S. to have more than one spouse. But it happens all the time if you pay attention to what’s written. A pair of commas makes all the difference.

When you don’t set off a spouse’s name by commas, the indication is that there is more than one spouse.

If you’re providing the name of a husband or wife in a story, it’s probably a nonessential phrase.

A nonessential phrase is an extra bit of info that adds some detail to the sentence, but isn’t required to make the sentence understandable.

How to tell if you’ve got a nonessential phrase? You can take the phrase out of the sentence and it still makes sense. It’s “nonessential” to the sentence.

And nonessential phrases must have a comma before and after them.

Here’s what I mean:

She married her husband, Thomas Williams, in 2013.

The nonessential phrase here is the husband’s name. If it’s removed, the sentence still makes sense:

She married her husband in 2013.

Now, if you take the commas out, but keep the nonessential phrase in, you’re indicating there’s more than one husband. Thomas Williams just happens to be the one we’re talking about in this sentence:

She married her husband Thomas Williams in 2013 (and hey, maybe she married her other husband back in 2003).

Keep it legal, folks.

Last week’s ChanteSez was about the use of punctuation with quote marks. My advice was to quote everything within a quote. The key word there is “within.”

That is, whatever punctuation was necessary to indicate what someone said — or how they said it — should go within the quote marks.

If the quote was a question, was said with force, or was simply a complete thought, the appropriate punctuation belongs inside the quote marks.

“Do people understand the power of proper punctuation?” she asked.

“I am so ready to go to Miami!” he said.

“If you come home with another C,” his mom yelled, “no Facebook or Twitter for two weeks!”

The only time you wouldn’t include punctuation inside the quote marks is if you, the writer, are asking a question or making a statement of force, unbelief, etc., about the quote.

In the first example below, my colleague at Terribly Write is asking a question about the quote. (Thank you, Laura, for making sure I clarified this rule!)

Are you saying, “Put all punctuation inside quotation marks”?

There’s never been an adage more true than “Put your money where your mouth is”!

Tag: punctuation

ChanteSez … Don’t commit bigamy in your writing

ChanteSez … You can quote me, part 2