punctuation – Deborah Makarios

October 23, 2017

Welcome to the New Site!

Come on in and make yourself comfortable!

As promised, here are the answers to the Proofreading Fun quiz.

Challenge One: matching the characters to the names.
1D, 2E, 3A, 4F, 5B, 6G, 7H, 8C
Which is to say:
guillemet «
interrobang ‽
obelus ÷
pilcrow ¶
asterism ⁂
solidus /
hedera ❧
octothorpe #

Challenge Two: where would you hyphenate the following words?
bur-ied
can-opy
guard-ians
min-ute (tick tick, not tiny)
sau-téed
start-ling
strength (there’s the trick question I warned you about)
whee-dling

Congratulations to those who took part. No one has yet said anything opprobrious regarding the Oxford Comma, but I trust that those who harbour ill-will towards it will feel welcome here nonetheless.

October 6, 2017

Proofreading Fun

Are you ready for some good clean proofreading-related fun? I thought as much.
Here are three challenges for you to whet your wits upon. Put your answer in the comments, and I’ll release the correct answers in due course.

Disclaimer: one part of one of these challenges (and no, I’m not telling you which) is something of a trick question. One of the other challenges may not even have a correct answer, but may result in injury, maiming or death. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Challenge One: match the characters to the names.
1 guillemet
2 interrobang
3 obelus
4 pilcrow
5 asterism
6 solidus
7 hedera
8 octothorpe

A ÷ B ⁂ C # D « E ‽ F ¶ G / H ❧

Challenge Two: where would you hyphenate the following words?
buried
canopy
guardians
minute (tick tick, not tiny)
sautéed
startling
strength
wheedling

Challenge Three: are you for or against the Oxford comma? «barricades self under desk and refuses to come out»

October 5, 2017

Lethal Punctuation

“Yes, you can see the bullet points here, here and here, sir; there are multiple back-slashes, of course. And that’s a forward slash. I would have to call this a frenzied attack. Did anyone hear the interrobang?”
“Oh yes. Woman next door was temporarily deafened by it. What’s this?”
“Ah. You don’t see many of these any more. It’s an emoticon. Hold your head this way and it appears to be winking.”
“Good God! You mean – ?”
“That’s the mouth.”
“You mean – ?”
“That’s the nose.”
“Good grief Then it’s – ?”
“Oh yes, sir. There’s no doubt about it, sir. The Punctuation Murderer has struck again.”
Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation