Lawsuit: Plurals vs. Possessives

When you are talking about the Dowdells as a family unit, it's plural, as in Dowdells; e.g., the Dowdells demand a jury trial.

When you are talking about a single Dowdell in the possessive form, then it's Dowdell's; e.g., Dowdell's IQ score was 94.

When you are talking about a group of Dowdells in the possessive, then it's Dowdells'; e.g., the Dowdells' lawsuit.

Losta problems with apostrophes and s's in this one.

Speech: Punctuation And Quotes

Still having some serious problems on punctuation and capitalization around quotes.

When a quote ends a sentence, followed by attribution, then the end of the quote gets a comma -- even if the quote was the source's spoken word -- and the attribution which follows is lower-case.

So if I say this:

"You guys rock."

Then this is how it should read:

"You guys rock," Omar said.

And this is NOT how it should read:

"You guys rock." Said Omar.

Also, general journalistic practice is to simply say said, even repeatedly and without having to come up with a different word for "said." I know it looks weird, having graf after graf with he said and she said and whomever said, but in journalism we just use said over and over and over again.

No matter how much I've been marking up people's papers with copy-editing symbols noting how it should be, it seems like the same mistakes are being made over and over.

Please made sure you are reading your returned papers and following my copy-editing marks as translated by the handout you got during the first few days of class.

Speech: Titles And Commas

If you have a formal title ahead of a name, then there is no need for a separating comma and you do capitalize the title. So you do this:

U.S. Surgeon General Tom Izzo said ...

...and NOT this ...

U.S. Surgeon General, Tom Izzo said ...

... in the same way you would say this:

Capt. Crunch said ....

... but NOT this ...

Capt., Crunch said ...

Now, if that title is not being used as a direct title, but as an identifier separate from the name, then do use lower case and commas, like this:

The U.S. surgeon general, Tom Izzo, said ...

... and this ...

Tom Izzo, the U.S. surgeon general, said ...

... and this ...

Crunch, a captain, said ...

... and this, too ...

A captain, Crunch, said ...

Lawsuit: Plurals vs. Possessives

When you are talking about the Dowdells as a family unit, it's plural, as in Dowdells; e.g., the Dowdells demand a jury trial.

When you are talking about a single Dowdell in the possessive form, then it's Dowdell's; e.g., Dowdell's IQ score was 94.

When you are talking about a group of Dowdells in the possessive, then it's Dowdells'; e.g., the Dowdells' lawsuit.

Losta problems with apostrophes and s's in this one.

Speech: Punctuation and Quotes

Still having some serious problems on punctuation and capitalization around quotes.

When a quote ends a sentence, followed by attribution, then the end of the quote gets a comma -- even if the quote was the source's spoken word -- and the attribution which follows is lower-case.

So if I say this:

"You guys rock."

Then this is how it should read:

"You guys rock," Omar said.

And this is NOT how it should read:

"You guys rock." Said Omar.

Also, general journalistic practice is to simply say said, even repeatedly and without having to come up with a different word for "said." I know it looks weird, having graf after graf with he said and she said and whomever said, but in journalism we just use said over and over and over again.

No matter how much I've been marking up people's papers with copy-editing symbols noting how it should be, it seems like the same mistakes are being made over and over.

Please made sure you are reading your returned papers and following my copy-editing marks as translated by the handout you got during the first few days of class.

Attribution: Quoes Within A Quote

When you have a quote, you use the traditional quotation symbols (" and ") to signify the quote itself.

But what if you have a quote within a quote? That is a quote where the subject is also quoting someone else?

For the quote within a quote, you use single quotation marks (' and ').

This is what it looks like, in actual use:

"My dad told me, 'Americans suffer under the illusion that everything can be cured by passing a new law.' My dad with right, of course. Most things can't be solved by a new law," Karpov said.

See? So remember, a quote gets the traditional double quotation marks; a quote within a quote is offset with single quotation marks.

Speech: Punctuation And Quotes

Still having some serious problems on punctation and capitalization around quotes.

When a quote ends a sentence, followed by attribution, then the end of the quote gets a comma -- even if the quote was the source's spoken word -- and the attribution which follows is lower-case.

So if I say this:

"You guys rock."

Then this is how it should read:

"You guys rock," Omar said.

And this is NOT how it should read:

"You guys rock." Said Omar.

Also, general journalistic practice is to simply say said, even repeatedly and without having to come up with a different word for "said." I know it looks weird, having graf after graf with he said and she said and whomever said, but in journalism we just use said over and over and over again.

No matter how much I've been marking up people's papers with copy-editing symbols noting how it should be, it seems like the same mistakes are being made over and over.

Please made sure you are reading your returned papers and following my copy-editing marks as translated by the handout you got during the first few days of class.

Lawsuit: Plural vs. Possessive

When you are talking about the Dowdells as a family unit, it's plural, as in Dowdells; e.g., the Dowdells demand a jury trial.

When you are talking about a single Dowdell in the possessive form, then it's Dowdell's; e.g., Dowdell's IQ score was 94.

When you are talking about a group of Dowdells in the possessive, then it's Dowdells'; e.g., the Dowdells' lawsuit.

Losta problems with apostrophes and s's in this one.

Robbery -- Punctuation

A number of you are still making a basic punctuation mistake by using a period to close a quote prior to attribution, like this:

"You suck." the class told Omar.

But in such transitions, you should use a comma to close the quote, even if the quote is the end of a sentence, like this:

"You suck," the class told Omar.

Another common goof is putting the punctuation outside the quotation marks, like this:

"You suck", the class told Omar.

What you should do is swap places between the comma and the second quotation mark, so the comma comes first.

Finally, don't forget that single quotation marks are used to denote a quote within a quote, like here:

"'You suck' and 'Your mother is a whore' is what the class told Omar," the witness told police.

Notice how in the first subquote the combination of the traditional double-quotation mark AND the single quotation mark creates a triple-mark. That may look weird, but that's okay.

Bicyclist -- Punctuation Points

Reminders on some basic punctuation points:

Most of the time, an attributing "he said" or "she said" should end with a period. Like this:

"One doctor said I had what they called a hangman's facture," Taylor said. "She said it was a miracle that I wasn't paralyzed."

Also, punctuation marks should go INSIDE of quotes, like this:

. . . you have to use crutches," Taylor said.

And not OUTSIDE of quotes, like this:

. . . you have to use crutches", Taylor said.