7 Things I've Recently Learned From "The Best Punctuation Book, Period."

By June Casagrande

I’ve just finished reading The Best Punctuation Book, Period by June Casagrande. Here are 7 things I learned from it.

1. How would you punctuate these sentences?

  • I’ll check in in the morning.
  • I found out that that was best.

You don’t have to punctuate them. But you can use a comma between the repeated words.

  • I’ll check in, in the morning.
  • I found out that, that was best.

2. There’s some disagreement on how to use commas with the word “too.”

I like it, too.
I too saw the movie.
I, too, saw the movie.

I’m so relieved people disagree on this.

3. Rhetorical questions can end in a period instead of a question mark. How about that.

4. The longest chapter in the book was the one about the hyphen, not the comma. The rules of the hyphen (-) are the most complex.

5. Technically, when writing an email to Joe you should use a comma between the word “Hi” and the word “Joe.”

Hi, Joe

That looks ugly though. So I’m never going to do that.

6. Punctuation varies according to different styles (book-editing style, news media and business writing style, science style, and academic style).

7. In the sentence above, should I have used a colon (:) instead of parentheses ()? This question has no right/wrong answer. Many times (but not always), punctuation is a matter of choice, not correctness.

***

Useful book. I recommend it.

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