Week 2: Punctuation and Quotes

 The most interesting and useful tips I learned this week were all about how to properly quote someone, including attributes, segmenting, and punctuating.

First, when attributing someone, start with the quotation, and then follow with who said it. The only time to break this rule is if a second person directly follows the first quotation, then attribute the second person before his/her quotation. Also, always use a noun or a pronoun before the verb in the attribution. For example, say “the principal said” instead of “said the principal.”

Second, if there are two or more sentences in a quotation, place the attribution after the first sentence. NEVER follow a fragmented quotation with a complete sentence, and—if possible—paraphrase a quote before only using a partial quote.

Third, when punctuating with a comma or period, keep the punctuation before the final quote mark. However, if you are closing the sentence with a question mark or an exclamation point, put the mark inside only if it is a part of the quote. If it is not, and the mark is attributed to the whole sentence, then place it on the outside of the closing quote mark.

Finally, some fun stuff!

The editing mistake that I found this week happens to be one of my favorite mistakes on the planet. I found this gem on a poster board in Elizabeth Hall this last week. Instead of writing “resumes” plural, the poster designer wrote “resume’s” possessive. While we can still make sense of the meaning based on context, it is funny to try and decipher the meaning of the phrase if it was  "resumes" was intended to be possessive.

I also noticed that there are no accent marks on the word, so I looked up AP’s opinion, and they do not use accent marks, making this only one mistake instead of a two.