“Ridiculously useful. The best book on punctuation I’ve ever seen.”
—Mignon Fogarty, author of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
“Invaluable reference work for professional proofreaders, editors, and writers because it is the only book that presents Chicago, AP, APA, and MLA conventions side by side. (Acronym-free translation: for each use of each punctuation mark, this book clearly explains and illustrates the practices used by book publishers, the news media, social science publications, and nonscientific academic papers and journal articles.)”
—Amy Einsohn, author of The Copyeditor’s Handbook
Introduction: Punctuation Is Easy, Except When It’s Not
How to Use This Book
Part I. Guidelines
Apostrophe
Comma
Period
Colon
Semicolon
Quotation Mark
Single Quotation Mark
Question Mark
Exclamation Point
Ellipsis
Hyphen
Em Dash
En Dash
Parenthesis
Bracket
Slash and Backslash
Lists
Numbers and Addresses
Part II. Punctuation A to Z
Appendix A: Understanding Grammatical Units:
Phrases, Clauses, Sentences, and Sentence Fragments
Appendix B: Identifying Parts of Speech for Better Punctuation
Acknowledgments
About the Author and Punctuation Panel
Index