Parentheses and the punctuation marks that love them …

Kelly reads from your comments …

"… could you write on punctuation and parentheses sometime? I don't think that was ever covered in my various English classes over the years.

- Neil"

First of all, thanks for writing, Neil. You stay classy. (Whee! A request! I'm famous!) … Ahem.

All right. The rules governing punctuation and parentheses are very simple (and, unfortunately, are not related in any way to those governing punctuation and quotation marks – but that's still a topic for another post. Must do that sometime).

Let's say you're ending a sentence with a parenthetical remark (as I'm doing just now). The remark is a dependent clause, so it's still part of the sentence, yet it's separated as something that is not entirely necessary to the sentence (something that could be excised without the sentence losing any of its clarity – although possibly some of its nuance). In this case, the period is outside the parentheses. (This rule also applies to commas and other types of punctuation; if a parenthetical statement is made in the middle of a sentence, all that stuff goes outside.)

Now, notice what I just did. A parenthetical statement which is its own sentence keeps the punctuation inside the parentheses.

And finally, imagine that you've got a statement that's in parentheses, but ends a sentence and begins another (like I'm doing right here. This sentence is my example). So you end the sentence within the parentheses, but then you place the period at the end of the second sentence outside the parentheses.

Here's the rule of thumb ("Ye couldn't hit much of anything wi' that. Perhaps they shoulda had a rule o' wrist"). Imagine that everything within the parentheses suddenly disappeared, because that's what parentheses mean: "The information within my borders is edifying, but unnecessary." Are your sentences still punctuated properly? Are you missing a period at the end of a sentence? Do you have a period out in the middle of nowhere, with no sentence to call home? If so, then revision is in order.

And if you can guess the movie from which the above parenthetical quote came, then you get a prize! (The prize of my undying appreciation for your knowledge of cult films. And that, my friend, is a gift you can take to the bank – where the tellers will probably look at you funny for trying to translate something like "appreciation" into something like "money.")

Ah, the proverbial fifth post …

What we're gonna do right here is go back … way back … back into time. The year was 1999, and I was the opinion editor at the Milford High School newspaper. I already wanted to be a copy editor, although I didn't yet know what they were called. All I knew was the satisfaction I gained from making people's writing better – helping them say what they wanted to say but didn't know how to express clearly.

It was the year that I would have my first run-in with an all-too-common writer's gaffe that would become a thorn in my side for years to come. It remains one of my most treasured pet peeves.

A columnist submitted a (not at all badly written) piece on how people should not judge their fellow students by their secret love for 'NSync. She outed herself as a boy-band fan in the very first paragraph, then paused. "Did you hear that? The proverbial gasp!" she wrote – imagining, no doubt, the expressions of horror on the faces of her Hot-Topic-shopping readers.

Upon reading that sentence, I racked my brain for the proverb about "she who taps her toes to the beat of five 19-year-olds who dress in matching outfits and pop-and-lock in perfect unison shalt be subject to ridicule and gasping" – to no avail.

(That was an awfully roundabout way of getting to the point, and if I ever come across a piece of journalistic writing that takes nine sentences to get to the point, they had better be at least nine times more entertaining than what is written here. Do as I say, dear readers – not as I do.)

Here's the thing - and the "proverbial" thing is very similar to the "literally" thing. If there's no proverb about it, you can't use the word. Period. And a proverb, sayeth Dictionary.com, is "a short pithy saying in frequent and widespread use that expresses a basic truth or practical precept."

Therefore, I can say that I took the proverbial ounce of prevention, but I cannot say that I was on the proverbial fence. "On the fence" isn't a proverb; it's a metaphor. You can say you were on the metaphorical fence or on the figurative fence. (But here's an idea. Why not just say you're undecided?)

When you have the urge to use "proverbial" in your writing, give yourself a reality check. What exactly is the expression you're using? Are you sure it's a proverb? If not, is it a metaphor, figure of speech, euphemism - or something else entirely? (In the case of my 'NSync-loving columnist, what she actually meant was that, given the closed minds of her high-school audience, a gasp was the typical, familiar or expected reaction.) Make these distinctions, and assign the proper adjectives accordingly.

This will *literally* take no time at all …

Welp, looks like something got my goat. I'd like to apologize to my legions of fans who were looking forward to reading about punctuation within (or without) quotation marks. Some other time.

But here's the thing. When a writer uses the word "literally," I'd estimate that eight times out of 10 it's redundant, and once in 10 it's incorrect.

Sometimes people think "literally" is just another word to add emphasis to what they're saying. Well, guess what, bucko. It's a word. Words mean things. And this one doesn't just mean "I'm a signifier that the writer is saying the following words in italics." (I was literally this close to the stage – I could literally see right up Britney Spears' dress! She is literally a 10!)

"Literally" implies two things: (1) that what you are saying has a figurative or metaphorical interpretation; and (2) that you can throw out that interpretation, because you wish to convey the literal meaning, rather than the figurative one.

Luckily for you, almost any phrase can have a figurative meaning – but come on. If you're saying that the store is "literally around the corner" from your own, how is that different from saying simply that the store is "around the corner"? Yes: if you're speaking in a global sense, Cleveland is figuratively "around the corner" from Cincinnati. But when you're talking about the local dry cleaner or adult video store, is anyone really going to mistake your "corner" for a figure of speech? Don't add an extra four syllables if your meaning is already clear.

Now for the other way people misuse "literally" – see my post title for one example and the "Britney = 10" sentence for another. In order to use "literally," your intended meaning has to be literal. There's no way my post could have actually taken no time at all, and there's no way Ms. Spears is really a 1 with a 0 next to it.

The only effective way to use "literally" is if a situation occurs which lends itself to a figure of speech, but through some twist of fate, the literal interpretation of the figure of speech also applies. Therefore, a man who is investing in breeding chickens in the hope of making some extra money to put away for the future is "creating a nest egg – literally." (You'll notice that even then, "literally" is not truly necessary. Astute readers will pick up on the double meaning without help.)

Hopefully, this post will make you so sick of looking at the word "literally" that you'll take special pains to avoid using it from now on. And just in case not ... literally literally literally literally literally!

Those pesky quotation marks

I've been seeing plenty of copy lately from writers who think that the context of a phrase determines whether it gets single or double quotes. These writers put direct quotes from sources in double quotes; they put phrases that use quotation marks for some other reason (nicknames, sarcasm, unusual phrases, cuteness, etc.) in single quotes.

It's a nice idea, and apparently grammarians throughout history have experimented with something similar (see Eats, Shoots and Leaves), but it is, ultimately, incorrect.

Here's the rule for quotes (in America; in Britain, where they drive on the wrong side of the road, it only makes sense that they'd be backwards in their grammar rules as well). Always, always, always use double quotes, regardless of context. "But then when do I use single quotes?" I can hear you saying. Well, I'll tell you:

"You use 'single quote marks' when there is something quote-worthy 'inside' the already-quoted material. This rule is also context-free; it works the same way whether I'm telling you that Katie said, 'We should go to that bangin' party!' or I'm talking about something 'cutesy.'" (Actually, I think the majority of cutesy phrases don't need any quotation marks at all, but that's a subject for another post.)

Now, let's say that, for some reason, your quote is so very convoluted and postmodern that you need to put ANOTHER quoted phrase within the quotes that are within the quotes (and considering that your story itself could also be seen as one long quote, within which you the writer are talking to the reader and giving her the story, we're beginning to reach levels of hearsay rivaled only by high-school girls trying to find out if that boy in study hall is into them. Try not to let it happen). But say it's necessary. The quote within the already-single-quoted material will be in double quotes. Double, single, double, single. I say: "He said, 'She said, "He totally thinks Kelly's cute!"'" (All right! I better go put on some more lip gloss before study hall!)

Next time (unless something really gets my goat and I have to write about it instead): Punctuation and the Quote.

Let's talk Web sites

(This post was inspired by real events, but identifying details have been changed, so as not to offend the offender.)

The rule of thumb: Keep it simple.

Say you're writing a story, and you want to add a Web site to which people can go for more information on the subject. For purposes of this example, you are writing a story about the Cincinnati Opera's performance of Carmen. You go to the Cincinnati Opera's Web site, which is www.cincinnatiopera.com. There, you see a link to the opera's Summer Festival, of which Carmen is a part. You click on that, and it gives you a list of the operas that are a part of the Summer Festival. Click on "Carmen," and you get a site with info about the show and a link to buy tickets. The site's URL is as such: http://www.cincinnatiopera.com/content.jsp?articleId=31

Now of course, this is the site to which you want to point your readers. But come on. They're never going to remember that. Don't bother with the jsps and the articleids - just list www.cincinnatiopera.com. The main Web site is simple enough to navigate that no reader is going to be flummoxed by it. (You like that word "flummox"? So do I, baby.)

Be nice to your reader - give them something that won't leave them hunched over the keyboard for an hour, flicking from paper to screen to make sure they put that last slash in the right place. Being led to a simple URL that's two clicks away from what you want is infinitely preferable to that miserable fate.

If it's something that's not linked directly from the homepage (say, a product listing on Amazon or eBay), just give the homepage and tell the readers to do a search for "ted koppel nude pictures" or whatever the story's about.

Of course, sometimes the only URL available will be long and complicated. C'est la vie. Go ahead and list it. It's better than nothing.