Law Office Administrator - Ardmore Publishing

I were, you be, it please the court

The first nine punctuation marks
Punctuation has lots of different marks, some rather obscure, but everybody needs to use 11 of them correctly. Here are the first nine. Next month, the other two: quotation marks and apostrophes. • Period. A period is a dead stop, and mostly it gets used at the end of a sentence. It also gets used with abbreviations such as etc., Sept., and Inc. In math, it’s called a decimal. • Ellipsis. This is three spaced-out periods. It shows that something is missing, as in “twinkle twinkle . . . how I wonder what you are.” When an ellipsis comes at the end of the sentence, just add whatever punctuation would ordinarily go there, even if it’s another period, as in “how I wonder . . . .” • Comma. Commas show short pauses, and they cause problems for everybody. The big thing to remember, though, is that in the US, both commas and periods always go inside quotation marks. It’s “hello,” he said. And we studied the poem “Annabel Lee.” Some attorneys say legal documents are different, that the commas go inside or outside the quotes depending on where they logically belong. Their reasoning may come from the fact that most legal documents originated in the English Common Law, and in the UK that’s the rule – commas and periods go where they make sense. However, once a document crosses the US border, US punctuation law takes over: commas and periods go inside the quotes. • Semicolon. A semicolon separates two whole	sentences that don’t have a conjunction between them. The days are hot; the nights are hotter. It also separates sections of a sentence that have commas in them. We painted the walls purple, green, and yellow; however, the neighbors seemed not to like it. • Exclamation point. This one’s easy. Egad! Taxes are due again! • Question mark or interrogation point. Easy again. Are taxes really due today? However, unlike the commas and periods, question marks and exclamation points go inside or outside quotes according to logic, as in have you ever read “Annabel Lee”? and sit down and memorize “Annabel Lee”! • Dash. This shows a suspension, interruption, or turn of thought. He stood there – I shudder to remember – holding the bloody knife. Don’t use dashes unless there’s a specific need for them. People tend to throw them in unnecessarily. • Parentheses. They set off comments or explanations that aren’t part of the sentence. Jason (he was only eight years old at the time) had dreams of committing the perfect murder. • Brackets. Use these as parentheses inside parentheses as in Jason (only eight [8!] at the time) dreamed of blood and gore. If there’s another parenthetical inside that, use double parentheses; inside that, use double brackets. Thus it’s ( [ (( [[ ]] )) ] ). Any more than that is too confusing to think about.
Double ” – single ’ – no ” ’ at all
Here’s the second part of a look at the 11 most common punctuation marks. Last month we covered nine of them – periods, elipses, commas, semicolons, exclamation points, question marks, dashes, parentheses, and brackets. Here are the other two. They are quotation marks and apostrophes, and they are bugaboos. • Quotation marks. These go around direct or word-for-word quotations as in the new drama critic said the play was “a waste of time.” Quotes also go around titles, but not all of them. They get used only on the titles of short works such as poems, magazine articles, and chapters. Long works such as books get italicized. A good rule of thumb is that what can be held in the hand gets italics but what’s inside gets quotes. Thus, the title of the poetry book in the hand gets italics but the poems inside it get quotes. In the U.S., periods and commas always go inside quotation marks even if they don’t logically belong there. All the other punctuation marks go inside or outside depending on what makes sense. Did you read the poem “Jabberwocky”? Yes, I read Jabberwocky.” Don’t ask why. Nobody knows. There are double quotes and single quotes, and the single ones go inside the double ones. Like this: “Our teacher,” she said, “told us to read	‘Jabberwocky’ tonight.” Or like this: “Tonight’s assignment,” the teacher said, “is to read ‘Jabberwocky.’” People think quotes can do more. They use them to draw attention to things, as in yes, you can expect “exceptional” car values here or he’s putting his “giant” intellect to work. That doesn’t draw attention to anything except the fact that the writer missed a punctuation lesson back in the eighth grade. Leave the quotes off. If the sentence is well written, the words will stand out on their own. • Apostrophes. These get used two ways. One is to make possessives as in Fred’s bicycle or James’s skates or the attorneys’ dining room. The other is to show something is missing as in he OK’d the deal or pot o’ gold or Tam O’ Shanter. That’s why contractions have apostrophes. Something is missing. I would becomes I’d, you are becomes you’re, do not becomes don’t, and am not becomes ain’t. No matter how hard it tries, however, an apostrophe cannot make something plural. The Williams family is the Williamses, not the Williams’. Hmmmm . . . why does that sentence end in ’. and not .’ ? Because the ’ isn’t a quotation mark. It’s an apostrophe.
*I were, you be, it please the court*
Verbs have what are called moods. There are four of them. The imperative mood gives a command: Frieda, sit down. The indicative mood states a fact: Frieda is still standing. The interrogative mood asks a question: Frieda, are you ever going to sit down? And then there’s the subjunctive mood. It expresses things that aren’t so and things that aren’t sure – wishes, hopes, guesses: I wish Frieda weren’t such a blockhead. Nobody seems to understand when or how to use the subjunctive mood. In fact, people miss it so often that anybody who does use it correctly sounds like quite a scholar. Want respect? Thrown in a subjunctive: If I were you, if that be the case, I insist that you be there. The subjunctive is actually quite simple, however. It has only three possibilities: • be for the present tense, • were for the past tense, and • no s on the end of a verb. Thus, it looks like this: *be:* Be that as it may . . . If that be true, we won’t have to stay here long.	He recommends that we be there before noon. Caesar commanded that the Rubicon be crossed. *were:* I wish I weren’t so tall. If that were true, we wouldn’t be here. He behaves as if he were being watched. If I were a rich man ya-da-da-da-da no s on the verb: It is no longer essential that a woman wear a skirt. God save the queen! If it please the court. Lest you forget *Right or wrong?* • It’s vital that she finishes the job today. (Wrong. A statement such as it’s necessary that or it’s essential that or it’s vital that shows something that isn’t so. It’s vital that she finish the job.) • Once she started reading it, she wished her report was longer. (Wrong. The report wasn’t longer and she wished it were.) • The court required that he submit weekly reports. (Right) • The restaurant insists that he use a glove when he shucks the oysters. (Right) • If Martha was here, she’d demand that he see us. (Wrong and right. Martha isn’t here so it’s were. And see is subjunctive.) • O, I wish I was in Dixie. (Oh well.)
*The greengrocers apostrophe’s*
To show who owns what, English has the possessive case. Most of the time, it’s a matter of an s plus an apostrophe. But oh how that apostrophe gets misplaced! It winds up on family Christmas cards as Happy Holidays from the Jones’ and Seasons Greetings from the Williamses’. It finds its way into plurals where people think there just has to be an apostrophe in there somewhere and so turn chimneys into chimney’s and hors d’oeuvres into hor’s d’oeuvres. That’s so common it even has a name – the greengrocer’s apostrophes – which are the apostrophes grocery stores so often add to produce signs such as fresh apple’s and shelled butterbean’s. The Joneses, the Williamses, the apples, and the butterbeans don’t get apostrophes because they aren’t possessives. They are just plurals. Here’s how to get possessives right. • If the word is singular, add an apostrophe and an s to it – a man’s hat, John’s concern, the managing partner’s decision. What if it already ends in s? Do the same. It’s James’s lack of concern and Jesus’s teachings. • If the word is plural, add an apostrophe, but put on an s only if there isn’t already one there. That makes it the attorneys’ dining room but a gentlemen’s club. • What if two people are owners? In that case	the apostrophe depends on whether the two people own something together or if each one owns an item. If the brothers Karamozov are sharing a bottle of vodka, it's Ivan and Dmitri’s vodka, or the brothers’ vodka. If they each have their own, it’s Ivan’s and Dmitri’s bottles. • The personal pronouns don’t get apostrophes at all. Those prounous are I, you, he, she, it, we, and they. Their possessive forms are my-mine, your-yours, his, her-hers, its, our-ours, and their-theirs. That’s why it’s always means it is. To say that the firm has lost it’s best paralegal is the same as saying it has lost it is best paralegal. Other pronouns, however, do get apostrophes with their possessive forms as in someone’s idea or everybody’s thinking. • A fine point about possessives is that there is another type of possessive known as the genitive case. It is a little recognized case that shows neuter possession, or possession by something other than a person or an animal. And oddly enough, it doesn’t take the form of the apostrophe and the s. Strictly speaking, it’s not the tree’s bark but the bark of the tree, not the sun’s rising but the rising of the sun, and not the court’s order but the order of the court. Few people are even aware of that, and it could scarcely be considered an egregious error to miss it, but it’s a point worth knowing all the same.