The Art of Editing, Part Three: Punctuation

In my mini-series on editing, it’s time to consider punctuation. It’s a minefield, this; and some of you might disagree with me, but I hope it’s helpful nonetheless. Punctuation breaks up an endless flow of words for easier reading and also (when reading out loud) where you can breathe.

This month, let’s talk about the apostrophe – and get this horrible little blighter out of the way.

I used one in “let’s” just now. Why? Because one function is to indicate where there are missing letters, where words have been joined up colloquially. We’ve, she’d, might’ve, are all examples. All very straightforward. Of course, the thorny issue comes when the apostrophe is used to indicate possession: the coat that belongs to Carol is Carol’s coat. But the coats that belong to Carol Gee, Carol Eff and Carol Aitch are Carols’ coats. Get it? (Of course, it really, really doesn’t help that English is so pesky. “Children” is a single word describing a plural number of little people, so you would have “children’s coats” and not “childrens’ coats”. I know…)

Just make sure, please oh please, that you don’t use an apostrophe to indicate a plural. “Coat’s” is not the plural of “coat”. (Even worse, my mum’s greengrocer used to advertise “coughette’s” for sale – why not mis-spell whilst you’re about mis-grammarising?) Although, according to Prof. David Crystal, a leading linguist, that’s exactly how they used to make a word plural, way back when. I’m happy for them; but things are different now. Let’s not regress, shall we?

Moving onto the other ‘up in the air’ commas, let’s consider speech marks – unless you’re Cormac McCarthy and don’t bother at all. Once more, the aim here is for clarity. You read a “ and know that someone is about to say something. You read another ” at the end of the set of words and know that they have stopped. When they stop speaking, they pause with a comma, or conclude with a full-stop before the closing speech mark.

“Let’s get this blog over and done with.” is correct; whilst “Let’s get this blog over and done with”. is not. Helpfully, Word is confirming this with a wiggly blue line.

One more thing, though: convention (house style, if you will) has moved away from using the “xxx” kind of speech mark, and tends to use ‘xxx’. I like the neater look of it. But one, really last thing: if someone is speaking and quoting someone else, they do it like this:

‘And if I hear her say “one more thing” one more time, I’m going to poke her in the eye.’

Clear?

More next time…

Jane Walters is Chair of ACW and leads the ACW-affiliated group Green Pastures Christian Writers.

She is currently catching her breath after the wonderful Autumn Gathering before resuming work on her latest Bible resource.

Insta: @readywritersretreats

www.janewyattwalters.com