Punctuating Close Quotes in Four Easy Lessons, Part III

Today guest blogger Boyd Sutton will be helping out with easy rules and examples for "Closing Quotes with Dashes." If you missed parts I and II just scroll down a bit!


By Boyd Sutton


Punctuating Dashes and Close Quotes

A single dash may be used to indicate that a statement within quotes is incomplete. In such cases, put the dash before the closing quotation mark.

Wrong: John said, “I don’ believe that he”-

Right: John said, “I don’ believe that he-” (Note there is no terminal punctuation after the dash.)

An em-dash (double dash) follows the close quotation mark if the dash belongs to the sentence housing the quotation, but not to the quotation.

Right: He said, “You’ll never take me alive”—and jumped from the roof. (Note there is no punctuation before the close quote.

Tomorrow we'll cover punctuating closing quotes with question marks and exclamation points.
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Boyd Sutton is producer and editor of the Wisconsin Writers’ Journal, a quarterly publication of the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association . His articles, essays, and short stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines. He is a freelance editor and has won many writing awards, including the Jade Ring, Wisconsin’s most prestigious writing award, for his essay, “Owning Your Own Time—Managing Your Retirement.” He may be reached at journal@wrwa.net. This article first appeared in the 2008 winter edition of the Wisconsin Writers’ Journal.


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0978515870. Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com, where writers will find lists and other helps on the Resources for Writers page. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at her Sharing with Writers blog.

Second in a Series on Ellipses by Boyd Sutton

Ellipses are an often neglected subject--one, in fact, that many editors are not thoroughly versed on. Boyd Sutton, editor of Wisconsin Writers' Journal, the official journal for WRWA, published a well-researched piece on ellipses in his 60th anniversary edition this month. He has kindly allowed me to serialize it and run it in this colummn, a little (digestible) piece at a time. Today ellipes and dashes and typing ellipes.

By Boyd Sutton, editor of the Wisconsin Writers' Journal

See the first column in this series for infomation on when to use ellipes.

As a Substitute for Dashes

Avoid using ellipses as a substitute for a dash.

Incorrect: He was willing to set aside his anger ... for the moment.

Correct: He was willing to set aside his anger—for the moment.

Typing Ellipses

The Chicago Manual of Style recommends typing ellipses by beginning with a space following the word, then three spaced dots (dot-space-dot-space-dot), then another space before the next word. Thus: “I didn’t mean . . . I mean that I would never have said something like that.” But, according to the Wikipedia entry on ellipses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis), Robert Bringhurst (Elements of Typographic Style) argues that a full space between each dot is “another Victorian eccentricity. In most contexts, the Chicago ellipsis is much too wide.” He recommends using flush dots (dot-dot-dot). Thus, “I didn’t mean ... I mean that I would never have said something like that.” (But note that there is still a space before and after the three dots.) In the Wisconsin Writers’ Journal, I will adopt the more modern use—three dots with no intervening spaces ( ... ), but writers should always use the style of the publication to which they are submitting. Always make certain that the beginning and ending spaces and all three dots fit on a single line of text.

Note from Carolyn: Most editors of books choose to use ellipses with the spaces. That is what I recommend in The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. You'll also informaton on the desired style selections for em dashes and en dashes in that book.
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Boyd Sutton is producer and editor of the Wisconsin Writers’ Journal, a quarterly publication of the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association . His articles, essays, and short stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines. He is a freelance editor and has won many writing awards, including the Jade Ring, Wisconsin’s most prestigious writing award, for his essay, “Owning Your Own Time—Managing Your Retirement.” He may be reached at journal@wrwa.net. This article first appeared in the 2008 winter edition of the Wisconsin Writers’ Journal.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0978515870. Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com, where writers will find lists and other helps on the Resources for Writers page. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at her Sharing with Writers blog.

Q&A A La Ann Landers: So OK. About Those Em Dashes!

I've been updating the formatting of my newsletter. Yep, that kind of thing is editing, too. This letter started out with a comment on the change of font from Arial to Verdana but then up came that hyphen/en dash/em dash thing. There is a full section on using and formatting these pesky guys in The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Hope you'll use this occasion to learn more about them.

Question:

Carolyn:

I LOVE Verdana - I do all my writing in it, as it is tremendously easy on
the eyes...on the computer screen. I personally HATE Times New Roman - very
difficult to find errors because of the typeface. But, I always convert to
Times New Roman before I send out a query letter, submission, etc. because
of its popularity with the publishing community.

So, keep up the good work. BTW, what is with all the spaces before and after
a hyphen? Even e-mail showed up as e - mail.-----Katie Hines, Freelance Writer & Children’s Author.

Answer:

Thank you for your input, Katie. Love it. Yes, as I suggest in the Frugal Editor, better to go with tradition when we're trying to get our work past a gatekeeper! In other cases we get to break rules and maybe, in the process, make some new ones that are better. Glad you love Verdana. I almost settled on Calibri which I like, too, but decided to go with Annette Fix's (author of the Break-Up Diet) recommendation.

As for the hyphens. I checked and my Word copy shows no spaces on either side of the hyphen in the word e-mail or others. So can't tell you what is up with that! Maybe something to do with line breaks or servers. Geesht. who knows?

As for em dashes (those longer dashes we use between ideas and such), I do use spaces on either side of them. This is a style choice for online reading (It is not a rule, but it is often done and sometimes advised). It is never, never done in books or other print, though. I used the spaces before when I was using Arial font but maybe they aren't needed with Verdana. Maybe the wider-spaced Verdana design makes them, mmmmm...obsolete. Thank you! I'll try them without.

(You can subscribe to my weekly newsletter by sending me an e-mail at hojonews@aol.com. Put "Subscribe" in the subject line.)


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0978515870. Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com.