4th Edition
Punctuation Matters Advice on Punctuation for Scientific and Technical Writing
Part 1: Policy 1. Difficulties Caused by Lack of Punctuation 2. The Jobs Done by Punctuation Marks 3. The Relation of Punctuation to Intonation and Stress 4. Is 'Open' or 'Light' Punctuation Enough? 5. How Punctuation Helps Reading 6. Reducing Uncertainty by Punctuating Carefully 7. Absence of Punctuation May Damage Your Credibility 8. Redundancy as Helpful Reinforcement 9. The Lazy Writer's Evasion of Responsibility Part 2: Guidelines 1. Apostrophe 2. Capital Letters 3. Colon 4. Comma 5. Dash (em rule and en rule) 6. Ellipsis Points 7. Exclamation Mark 8. Full Stop 9. Hyphen 10. Inverted Commas (or Quotation Marks) 11. Parentheses (or Brackets) 12. Question Mark 13. Semi-Colon 14. Slash 15. Underlining 16. Variations in Printing: Bold Type and Italic Type Part 3: Appendices Appendix 1: Paragraphing Appendix 2: Word-Division Appendix 3: Differences in punctuation in American English and British English
Biography
John Kirkman is a communications specialist who runs his own consultancy specialising in technical and scientific writing.
"…it sets out in readable and clear prose all the basics and many of the subtleties of punctuation that science and technical writers need to know." -- Karen Lane, Technical Communication, Vol. 55, Number 1, February 2008
