NAMELY PUNCTUATION SERIAL

Use commas to clarify the connections between ideas in a sentence. How many more “nuclear states” will there be? For the possessive of a plural quoted term, rewrite the sentence so that the ’s construction does not need to be used (7.29).įour American Political Science Reviews, the APSR’s articles If a quoted term needs to be used in its plural form, add -s or -es to the end inside the quotation marks (7.13).

If an italicized term needs to be used in its plural or possessive form, add -s or -es (and an apostrophe if possessive) to the end without italicizing (7.12).

The president and vice president’s daily meeting, the president’s and vice president’s daughters In this case, the second element takes the possessive form (7.23).

Watch for closely linked nouns that act as a single unit in forming a possessive.

Kansas’s legislature, Chicago’s mayor, Marx’s theories Camus’s novels, Xerses’s armies, students’ notebooks, the United States’ role in international law, the National Academy of Sciences’ new policy

In this case, just an apostrophe is added (7.20). The major exception to the rule is nouns, particularly the names of places and organizations, plural in form but singular in meaning (i.e., the singular form ends in -s, similar to the plural). For plural nouns, an apostrophe is added after the final -s (7.16-7.17). Possessive forms of most singular nouns are formed by adding an apostrophe and an -s, even when the noun ends with s, x, or z.

Capital letters used as words, numerals as nouns, abbreviations, and family names are made plural by adding an -s without an apostrophe (7.15).

Much like quotation marks, typographer’s directional apostrophes should be used with extreme care, and should match the font style of the surrounding text (6.117). The unidirectional apostrophe should not be used.

Use apostrophes to: (1) indicate the possessive case, (2) indicate a missing numeral (e.g., class of ’08), or (3) form a plural.

NAMELY PUNCTUATION SERIAL

The serial comma (also called the Oxford comma) should be used throughout the entirety of manuscripts, except in the few instances before ampersands (6.19).Ampersands (&) should only be used in tight matter (i.e., tables and figures, notes, reference lists, appendices) and titles and headings/subheadings, never in the body of the manuscript.When the parenthetical or bracketed clause is included as part of another sentence (even if it could grammatically be a sentence itself), the period belongs outside. When an entire sentence is placed inside parentheses or brackets, the period belongs inside (6.13).The options available are “left,” “right,” “up,” and “down.” What will be the outcome of the era of “alternative facts”? While this rule applies to most other punctuation as well, this is not the case with semicolons, colons, question marks, and exclamation points that are not included explicitly as a part of the quoted matter. Periods and commas precede closing quotation marks, in traditional American English style (6.9).No spaces should precede or follow an em-dash at any point in time. One space, not two or more, should follow all periods, colons, question marks, exclamation points, and closing quotation marks.This rule is particularly important, as it can be difficult to tell the font style of certain punctuation (e.g., italicized periods and commas).

It should also appear in the same font style as the surrounding text, unless it is connected to a specific word or phrase that is in a different font style for emphasis. Punctuation should appear in the same font type and font size as its surrounding text.

Namely punctuation