Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
When reading a PS single-spaced sentence, it can be hard to tell the difference between comma-space and period-space, or period-space (in reference to an acronym) and period-space (in reference to a sentence ending). With period-space-space, you know that it is the next sentence, without any room for confusion. -- SineSwiper 03:35, 10 Feb 2005 ...
The comma-free approach is often used with partial quotations: The report observed "a 45% reduction in transmission rate". A comma is required when it would be present in the same construction if none of the material were a quotation: In Margaret Mead's view, "we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities" to enrich our culture.
This is a comma before "and" or "or" at the end of a series, regardless of whether it is needed for clarification purposes. For example: X, Y, and Z (with an Oxford comma) X, Y and Z (without an Oxford comma) Wikipedia has no preference between the two styles, but requests that the chosen style be used consistently within an article.
The use of thin spaces as separators, [30]: 133 not dots or commas (for example: 20 000 and 1 000 000 for "twenty thousand" and "one million"), has been official policy of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures since 1948 (and reaffirmed in 2003) stating "neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the spaces between groups", [26]
The 7th Edition, published in 2007, stipulates that the use of periods, question marks, and exclamation points as "terminal punctuation" to end a sentence should be followed by a single space. [ 28 ] Until the early 2000s, the Modern Language Association (MLA) left room for its adherents to single or double sentence space.
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
Commas are placed between items in lists, as in They own a cat, a dog, two rabbits, and seven mice. Whether the final conjunction, most frequently and, should be preceded by a comma, called the serial comma, is one of the most disputed linguistic or stylistic questions in English: They served apples, peaches, and bananas. (serial comma used)
By convention, commas and periods go inside the closing quotation marks, but a parenthetical reference should intervene between the quotation and the required punctuation . . . All other punctuation marks—such as semicolons, colons, question marks, and exclamation points—go outside a closing quotation mark, except when they are part of the ...