Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar by Jenny Baranick

Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar by Jenny Baranick

Author:Jenny Baranick [Baranick, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Linguistics, Reference, Writing Skills, Etymology, Grammar & Punctuation
ISBN: 9781628737509
Google: CVxIngEACAAJ
Amazon: 1616083700
Barnesnoble: 1616083700
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2014-03-04T00:00:00+00:00


10

Mary Ann or Ginger: Punctuation with Quotation Marks

The girl next door or the voluptuous vamp? Perky or sexy? Short shorts or plunging neckline? Exclamation point or question mark?

Through my punctuation-colored glasses, that’s how I see the Gilligan’s Island ladies. Mary Ann reminds me of the perky, straightforward exclamation point and Ginger of the curvy, mysterious question mark.

How do you like your ladies and punctuation marks? Enthusiastic or elusive? Frisky or seductive?

I appreciate the exclamation point because it adds excitement to any sentence:

The Professor just made a radio out of a coconut!

Yet I appreciate the question mark because it provides mystique:

Is there something going on between the Professor and Mary Ann?

There is, however, one situation in which the line between the exclamation and the question is blurred: the rhetorical question. The asker of the rhetorical question isn’t really expecting an answer; he or she is just using it for a dramatic effect. So, although it isn’t grammatically incorrect to punctuate a rhetorical question with a question mark, the exclamation point is also acceptable:

Gilligan, do you think you could stop screwing up all of our attempts to get off the island!

In addition to both being acceptable punctuation for rhetorical questions, both the question mark and exclamation point act the same way around quotation marks. When only the quotation itself is a question or exclamation, the question mark and exclamation point are a bit more demure and hide inside the quotation marks. However, when the entire sentence is a question or exclamation, the question mark and exclamation point are more forward and expose themselves outside the quotation marks.

Confused? Come with me on this short voyage, and I’ll show you what I mean:

In the following sentence, only the quotation is a question, so the question mark goes inside the quotation marks:

Mary Ann asked Ginger, “Why did you bring so many evening gowns on a three-hour tour?”

Similarly, in this next example, only the quotation is an exclamation, so like the question mark in the previous example, the exclamation point goes on the inside of the quotation marks:

Ginger replied, “At least I don’t prance around day after day in daisy dukes!”

In this next sentence, the quotation isn’t a question; the entire sentence is. Therefore, the question mark goes on the outside of the quotation marks:

Don’t you love it when the Professor said brainy things like “It was a geological phenomenon caused by volcanic activity beneath the Earth’s surface resulting into concentration of heat at a specific location”? And look—it’s the same with the exclamation point when the whole sentence is an exclamation: I do like the part about “concentration of heat at a specific location”!

If Mary Ann is an exclamation point and Ginger is a question mark, then Gilligan would have to be the comma, right? Gilligan got roped into doing most of the manual labor on the island, and with all of its uses, the comma does much of the heavy lifting in sentences. The Professor would be the period. The period is a no-nonsense punctuation mark, and the Professor was the most rational of the castaways.



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