Punctuation Survey

[Also]

This post is a rescue from the old board.

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I was going to put this on a blog page mostly as a convenient quick-ref for myself. Then I realized it might be helpful to discuss first, in part as a useful community discussion and in part to catch omissions or points someone believes to be incorrect.

I do believe in authorities and often consult them, but as a (mostly former) working editor, I've always paid a lot of attention to professional editorial precedent. For my relatively new focus on fiction, that means looking at major works published by the major houses.

Some of the practices below are merely obvious. A couple come from putative authorities, and a bunch are things I've flagged over the years in books I've read.

I find that examples, sometimes annotated, work better for most people than descriptive rules and terminology, so here's my personal list of models for punctuating dialogue. These look at period, comma, question mark, ellipsis, and em-dash—both interruptive and interjective.

One thing that surprised me in reviewing some of my books is that the single-character glyph-ellipsis (…) was widely used in place of the spaced ellipsis (. . .) in some of the very best places already as long as 60 years ago. From reading online advice today, one easily gets the impression the tight glyph is an invention of the Internet era. That is manifestly not the case. There were some surprising little details around usage of the glyph-ellipsis that I'll weave into the examples.

There are intricate connections between capitalization and the selection of comma or period in these examples. Agree or disagree, but the choice is not haphazard in any of them.

"Wait," she said.
"Wait," she said, "you have to take me with you."
(Reports "Wait, you have to take me with you.") [Note comma]

"Wait," she said. "You have to take me with you."
"Wait," she said, "You have to take me with you." [I probably wouldn't use this one, but it's not wrong.]
(Both report "Wait. You have to take me with you.") [Note period/fullstop]

"Wait." Her expression showed resignation. "We'll go together."
(reports "Wait. We'll go together.")

"Wait!" she cried.
"Wait!" She hurried after him. [Note capitalization]

"Wait!" she cried. "You have to take me with you!"
"Wait!" She hurried after him. "You have to take me with you!"
(Both report "Wait! You have to take me with you!")
(The second sentence isn't required to use an exclamation point, of course.)

"Wait…" she sighed "…we can go together, I guess."
(Reports "Wait . . . we can go together, I guess.")

"Wait…" she sighed. "We can go together, I guess."
(Reports "Wait.... We can go together, I guess." [Note the period/fullstop after the ellipsis — in this clarification, not in the paradigm example — ending the sentence.])

"Wait…" She put on a scolded-dog expression and placed her hand in his. "We can go together, I guess."
(Reports "Wait.... We can go together, I guess" as in the previous example.


"You can't be serious," she said, "[since] he was here only yesterday."
I don't like the second comma, because it reports the comma-spliced speech "You can't be serious, he was here only yesterday." But that's how one would report the speech if that's how the speaker says it. Personally, and since I can make the speaker say whatever I want them to say, I'd use one of the next two.
"You can't be serious," she said. "He was here only yesterday."
"You can't be serious!" she cried. "He was here only yesterday."

"And—?" [sharp, challenging, similar to So what?]
"And...?" [prolonged, inviting the partner to figure something out]
"So...?" [do you have something to tell me?]
A minority of publishers place the question mark before the dash or ellipsis in these.

Then there are these four:
"So what—dare I ask?—have you been doing all this time?"
"So what—dare I ask—have you been doing all this time?"
"And he claimed—the nerve!—to have known all along."
"I would hope—will you check?—that we can get a refund."

And more vanilla question forms:

"Why?" she asked.
"Why?" she asked. "What are you up to?"
"Why?" She turned slowly. "What are you up to?"

"Why," she said, "that's the most foolish idea I've ever heard."
(Reports "Why[,] that's the most foolish idea I've ever heard.")
"Why…" she said "…that's the most foolish idea I've ever heard."
(Reports "Why... that's the most foolish idea I've ever heard" which is equivalent to "Why . . . that's the most foolish idea I've ever heard.")

"Why—" she sputtered "—that's the most foolish idea I've ever heard!"
(Reports "Why—that's the most foolish idea I've ever heard!")
"Why?" she demanded. "That's the most foolish idea I've ever heard."
(Reports "Why? That's the most foolish idea I've ever heard.")

Note that with rare, antiquated exceptions, no other punctuation follows:
word—"
or precedes
"—word
regardless of possible capitalization.

"Why"—she turned to face Sylvia, her jaw trembling—"are you only telling me now?"
(Reports "Why are you only telling me now?")
"Why…" she turned to face Sylvia, her jaw trembling "…are you only telling me now?"
(Reports "Why are you only telling me now?" or "Why... are you only telling me now?)
"Why" ...she turned to face Sylvia, her jaw trembling... "are you only telling me now?"
(Less standard or non-standard, but this form is used by John Fowles and his distinguished editors at least once in Daniel Martin. Reports "Why are you only telling me now?" without implying any interruption in speech rhythm.)

"You promised we'd—"
"You promised we'd—" she began.
"You promised we'd—" She pulled away from him.

"You promised we'd—" she pulled away from him "—go away for the weekend."
This non-standard or less standard version (dashes inside the speech instead of outside) reports "You promised we'd—go away for the weekend."
It's much less common, but does occur now and then to emphasize the break in speech in addition to interjecting commentary (which in more ordinary instances does not have to break the speaker's flow).

Ian McEwan's Atonement frequently uses a space before or after a glyph-ellipsis. I believe that was more common in the deeper past, but clearly it still occurs.

"I'm sorry …" instead of "I'm sorry..."

But today … all day it’s been strange instead
of But today... all day it's been strange
or But today...all day it's been strange
or But today . . . all day it's been strange

Some sticklers differentiate between four dots (ellipsis plus period/fullstop) at the end of a sentence and only the ellipsis mid-sentence. There are even subtler end-of-line distinctions in a few publishers, but I'm not sure they're consistently applied.

Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage (Public Domain)(1915, George H Doran Company) provides these examples.

And I must leave all this"—he waved his arm round the dirty garret, with its unmade bed, the clothes lying on the floor, a row of empty beer bottles against the wall, piles of unbound, ragged books in every corner—"for some provincial university where I shall try and get a chair of philology.

"You were very glad to put up with me when you knew nobody here," she said bitterly, "and as soon as you made friends with other people you threw me aside, like an old glove"—she repeated the stale metaphor with satisfaction—"like an old glove. All right, I don't care, but I'm not going to be made a fool of another time."

And this unusual inverted gem:

Mildred, at first a little reserved in her appreciation—"I never quite trust these foreign places, you never know what there is in these messed up dishes"—was insensibly moved by it.

"But I've asked the Gordons to lunch"—they were an actor and his wife who were touring the provinces and in London for Sunday—"I told you about it a week ago."

Untangle this, if you can:

"That she did, I lay. I told her we'd been married two years—I had to say that, you know, because of baby—only your people wouldn't hear of it, because you was only a student"—she pronounced it stoodent—"and so we had to keep it a secret, but they'd given way now and we were all going down to stay with them in the summer."

Note the space between the ellipsis and the question mark, which is unconventional in modern fiction.

"What d'you mean? Are you afraid that… ?"

This is also unconventional in the modern eye, because it mixes ellipsis on the start of the interjected narrative (bad..." Philip) with comma on the end (discourse, "I speak).

"You're not a bad fellow, but you won't drink. Sobriety disturbs conversation. But when I speak of good and bad…" Philip saw he was taking up the thread of his discourse, "I speak conventionally.

Of course much has changed since 1915, but they're still almost modern.

John Fowles, The Magus (1965, Little, Brown, and Company)

‘You surely didn’t think I would—’ but she broke off.

This is interesting and happens more often with dashes than ellipses, but is otherwise not terribly uncommon. The interruption is an entire paragraph, and one sometimes sees rather extensive interruptions of speech handled this way. Also, notice how in paragraph 3 of this first example, the continued speech begins with glyph-ellipsis space and. I doubt it's a miscommunication with the typesetters, because it repeats in the next example, with glyph-ellipsis space under. Perhaps the space was part of the ellipsis glyph on old typesetting machines. That would also explain the appearance in other places and books of the antiquated form glyph-ellipse space question-mark.

And when I had finished, almost without words he picked up his hat and his amber-topped stick…’

I grinned. Lily saw my grin, but looked down and refused to share it; as if to ban it.

‘… and presented me with his card and asked me to call on him the next week.
The card told me that his name was Alphonse de Deukans. He was a count.

‘Couldn’t she go out…’ I looked at the tip of my cigarette ‘… under supervision?’

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy (1933, Harper & Brothers)

She was tucking her hoops down between the seat and the dashboard. Father spread the lap robe.

“—and mind, Eliza Jane. Be careful of fires; don’t you leave the house while there’s fire in the cookstove, and don’t get to scuffling with lighted candles, whatever you do, and—”

Father tightened the reins and the horses started.

“—don’t eat all the sugar!” Mother called back.

Lisa Alther, Original Sins (1981, Knopf)

As they sat licking honey off their mouths, Ben said, “Junior, did you ever, you know”—he blushed—“do it to a girl?”

“Well …” Sally hadn’t actually known there was such a thing. But the reporter was gazing at her with such respect. Clearly, she should know about such things. And her opinion, after all, was as valid as the next person’s. That was what democracy was all about. More valid maybe, because she’d been around a lot, was on TV every week, had written a book that was being read all around the area. “… yes, I think sewers are a real good idea.”

Notice, at the end of the example above, the period/fullstop after all around the area and before the in-quote ellipsis introducing ...yes, I think sewers are a real good idea. It's there because it comes after multiple sentences. While I don't object to it or feel strongly either way, I do believe some publishers would have omitted it. Others would include it even with a single complete and capitalized sentence between Well... and ...yes, but not with a phrase that's not a sentence, such as tapping the ash off her cigarette

John Fowles, Daniel Martin (1977, Little, Brown)

Note the ellipses moved outside the quotation marks in this one. It may be an accident, as his wife was his editor.

“Yes. He did. He’s”… she sought for suitably old-fashioned, dismissive words… “he’s formed a new attachment.”

 

[Mr Mononoke]

Sorry, not much to add but a message to say that was really cool.