Punctuation, Part 2

In this post I will discuss three more topics from the "Punctuation" portion of Rules for Writers that i find to be informative, and explain how they helped me improve my rhetorical analysis.

McPhee, Nic, "I tend to scribble a lot." 1/26/2008 via Flickr. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

1. The Apostrophe

• Most of the content of this section was a review for me, however I still learned/ was reminded of some crucial rules pertaining to apostrophe usage. For instance when things have joint possession of something the ('s) only follows the last noun, however if the nouns of the sentence have individual possession then both of the nouns have to be followed by ('s). I also learned that one should not use apostrophes when making numbers or letters plural, which is a mistake that I have definitely made in the past. 
• Reviewing this portion of "Punctuation" was helpful because it made me attentive of my apostrophe usage in my writing. For instance, after going back and looking at my essay I discovered that I mistakenly said: "In addition to using powerful statistics, Smith uses subtle humor in her writing to appeal to her audiences’ belief of fairness." Before reading this section on the apostrophe, I knew that my usage of the apostrophe in this sentence was wrong, but by reviewing my essay for specific apostrophe usage errors I was able to fix this mistake and change the word to "audience's".

2. End Punctuation

• I already knew a lot of the information  within this section of "Punctuation" regarding the correct use of periods, exclamation points, and question marks. However, the inclusion of the fact that one should not put periods between US Postal Service abbreviations, such as NJ, AZ, or CA, was something that was somewhat new to me. Also, I was always unsure if I should include an additional period in a sentence that ends with an abbreviation ending in a period, but now I am confident that the additional period is not necessary.

3. Other Punctuation Marks

• The knowledge that I gained from this part of the book, didn't really come from the ellipsis, slash, or parenthesis parts of this section, because I already was aware of most of the rules surrounding these punctuation marks. However, I definitely did learn valuable information about the usage of brackets and dashes. I knew that I could use brackets to point out words that I added to a quotation, but I was unaware of the fact that I could use "[sic]" to point out an error in the original sentence that I am quoting. In regards to the dash, I didn't really know the right time to appropriately use a dash at any point in my writing. But now I know that dashes can be used to emphasize a part of a sentence, introduce a list, or signal a shift in tone or thought.
• In my writing, before reading this portion of "Punctuation" I said, "Smith informs her readers that ending the prohibition of cannabis will enable American transportation, packaging, retail, processing, and tourism industries to thrive." However, after performing this reading I was able to change this sentence by including dashes, and it now states, "Smith informs her readers that ending the prohibition of cannabis will enable American industries--transportation, packaging, retail, processing, and tourism-- to thrive." This revision simplifies the sentence and adds more attention to the list of industries, or at least this is the effect that I hope it has.