| | | Punctuation |
The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is
liable to be misunderstood .... For the want of merely a comma,
it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a
sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.
--Edgar Allan Poe
Rules for punctuation vary with the language and with the
country. In American English, a space follows a punctuation
mark, but no space precedes a punctuation mark. Quotation
marks with "mono-spaced" text are set typewriter style,
but quotation marks with proportionally spaced text are done
``smart'' style.
Although acronyms and abbreviations are common in newspapers, formal writing usually avoids such shorthand. If you use a lot of abbreviations, you are committing the error of assuming that your audience knows everything that you know.
For example, the average college-educated American has never studied Latin and cannot reliably distinguish between "e.g." (exempli gratia, for example) and "i.e." (id est, that is). Use these abbreviations at peril of being misunderstood; do not even consider using esoteric abbreviations such as "viz." and "op. cit."
Every field of study has its own jargon. Specialized terminology can lend precision, but it also limits accessibility to outsiders. You may think it obvious that the acronym "BAMS" in your bibliography stands for "Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society," but a reader in Spain may be mystified.
Be aware that punctuation may have semantic content. Consider the following two sentences.
Students who like mathematics are friendly.
Students, who like mathematics, are friendly.
The first sentence qualifies the subset of those students who happen to like mathematics. The second sentence declares that all students both like mathematics and are friendly.
The Math 696 course
pages were last modified April 5, 2005. | | | Punctuation |