You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies

251 Pages·1978·1.07 MB·English

by  Eric Partridge

You Have a Point There
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You Have a Point There
A Guide to Punctuation and its
Allies
Eric Partridge
With a Chapter on American Practice by John
W.Clark
London & New York
First published in Great Britain 1953 by
Hamish Hamilton Ltd
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 1953 Eric Partridge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
ISBN 0-203-37992-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-38609-4 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-05075-8 (Print Edition)
For
HAMISH HAMILTON
who doesn’t need it
CONTENTS
FOREWORD ix
BOOK I: PUNCTUATION
1. INTRODUCTORY 2
2. PERIOD OR FULL STOP OR FULL POINT 8
3. COMMA 13
4. PERIOD AND COMMA IN 43
ABBREVIATION
5. SEMICOLON 45
6. COLON 54
7. PARENTHESES; DEGREES AND 65
VARIETIES OF PARENTHESIS
8. DASH; VARIOUS MEANS OF 70
INDICATING DISRUPTIVE MATTER
9. QUESTION MARK AND EXCLAMATION 82
MARK
10. ‘TWOPENCE COLOURED’: COMPOUND 85
POINTS; MULTIPLE DOTS
11. PUNCTUATION AT ALL POINTS; 94
RELATIVE VALUES OF THE POINTS
12. ‘NOT TOO LITTLE, NOT TOO MUCH’: 99
PUNCTUATION, CLOSE AND OPEN;
OVER-PUNCTUATION AND UNDER-
PUNCTUATION
vii
BOOK II: ALLIES AND ACCESSORIES
13. CAPITALS 110
14. ITALICS: EMPHASIS; DIFFERENTIATION 121
AND DISTINCTION; QUOTATION
15. QUOTATION MARKS OR INVERTED 125
COMMAS, ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE
16. MODES OF EMPHASIS 130
17. HYPHEN, ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE; 137
DIVISION AND SYLLABIFICATION-THE
VIRGIL OR VIRGULE OR OBLIQUE-THE
BRACE OR VINCULUM
18. APOSTROPHE 158
19. CAPITALS AND ITALICS, QUOTATION 166
AND EXCLAMATION MARKS,
HYPHENS: IN TITLES OF BOOKS,
PERIODICALS, CHAPTERS OR ARTICLES
20. INDENTION AND PARAGRAPHING 170
21. VARIOUS MODES OF QUOTATION IN 176
PROSE AND VERSE; RELATIONSHIP OF
QUOTATION TO PARAGRAPHING AND
INDENTION
BOOK III: ORCHESTRATION
22. ALLIANCE OF PUNCTUATION AND 183
QUOTATION: PUNCTUATION AN ART,
NOT A HAPHAZARDRY NOR YET A
PERFUNCTORINESS
23. FULL ORCHESTRA:
(i) SINGLE SENTENCES AND PARAGRAPHS 189
(ii) CONSECUTIVE PASSAGES 195
BOOK IV: AMERICAN
24. A CHAPTER ON AMERICAN PRACTICE: 220
by JOHN W. CLARK, University of Minnesota
viii
APPENDIX I: A FEW NOTES ON OTHER WORKS 232
,, II: A BRIEF LIST OF ACCENTS 234
SUBJECT INDEX 237
FOREWORD
SOME DAY a doctorate will justly be awarded to a scholar brave
enough to write a history of the theory and practice of British and
American punctuation, from the time when there certainly was none
until the time when there will perhaps be none.
I have aimed at something much less ambitious. Eschewing all but
the most recent history—except, here and there, for the sake of an
example—I deal only with the theory and especially the practice of
punctuation as we know it today and knew it yesterday; and with
such allies or accessories as capitals, italics, quotation marks,
hyphens, paragraphs.
Acquainted with ‘the literature of the subject’, I recognize the
merits, both of such books as that of T.F. and M.F.A.Husband, that of
Mr G.V.Carey and that of Mr Reginald Skelton, and of the chapters or
entries in such works as the Fowler brothers’ The King’s English,
H.W.Fowler’s Modern English Usage and G.H.Vallins’s Good English.
This recognition and that knowledge strongly confirm me in a
determination (publicly stated in the article on punctuation in Usage
and Abusage, 1942 in U.S.A., 1947 in Britain) to write a comprehensive
guide to punctuation and its concomitants. Such a guide is very badly
needed, especially in what I have called ‘orchestration’: and
orchestration forms the subject of the quite painfully practical
Book III.
Except for those persons who already know something useful
about punctuation, all the works I have examined (nor are they few)
exhibit at least one very grave fault. Whether they start with the full
stop, as logically they should, or, as most of them do, despite the
inescapable presence of a full stop, with the comma, they adduce
examples containing either one or more stops of which the learner
presumably knows nothing at this stage. There is only one logical,
only one sensible, only one practical, only one easy way in which a