You Have a Point There

• Author: Bryan A. Garner
• Pages: 28-29

You Have a Point There

Test your punctuation skills with a little quiz

By Bryan A. Garner

“Is punctuation importa nt?” a student once asked

me. I responded with a question back: “Is d ribbling

important in basketba ll?”

A bet ter resp onse mig ht have be en that b oth the U. S.

Supreme Court (way back in 1818) and the House of

Lord s in the U.K . (in 1916) have decide d case s in whic h

the pre sence or absence o f a mere co mma in a s tat-

ute determined whether prisoners went to the gallows.

And of course every few years we all hear about a new bil-

lion- dollar c omma ca se hing ing on how a contrac t or reg u-

lation is punctuated. That’s rare: I might have put commas

around of c ourse i n the prec eding s entence; t hose com mas

happen to be optional—as many are.

In fact, there wa s a time when almost all British con-

tracts were wholly unpunct uated on grounds that punc-

tuation shouldn’t be allowed to a ect meaning. A lit tle

extra space wa s inserted between sentences, but the doc-

uments were bereft of comma s, periods, semicolons and

the like. That doctri ne has been mostly superseded in

the U.K., where contracts tod ay are normally punctu-

ated. Well, I say “normally,” but I really mean in the man-

ner of British English. In that st yle, periods and commas

go outside an ending quotation mark. So the word “nor-

mally” above, in quote s, would have the comma out-

side, not inside. That’s the more logical placement, tr ue,

but Americans who follow copy edit ing conventions

uniformly tuck the com ma inside the end-quote even

though it’s not part of what’s being quoted.

Attentiveness to punctu ation is a matter of temper-

ament, I’ve come to believe. I know rea ders who are

thrilled to se e something like the previous paragraph.

Their pulses quicken, and they beg in taking notes to

compose an email. Ot hers, however, see a reference to

placement of periods and comma s in relation to end-

quotes and immediately st op reading. They couldn’t care

less and they consider the whole subject a stupef ying

bore. Oh, and that ty pe doesn’t say couldn’t care less; they

say they could care le ss—that type of reader. Not that I’m

judging; I’m just describing what I’ve lear ned from years

of experience.

But if you’re the typ e who’s read this far, you’re probably

up for a p unctua tion quiz . So tr y your ha nd. Plea se answ er

all the questions before looking at the answers, which are

keyed to both The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed . 2017)

and my Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (4th ed. 2018).

For each passage, choose the best answer that says some-

thing true about the quiz sentence. Not that you’re going to

look up a ll the r eference s (I doubt y ou’re the t ype). But it ’s

good t o know t hat profe ssional copy edit ors tend to edit b y

rule s that c an be st udied an d learne d.

If you don’t score as well as you think you should,

please don’t resolve to simply go without punctuation.

28 || ABA JOURNAL MAY 2019

Bryan

Garner

on Words

FOLLOW ON TWITT ER

@BryanAGarner

1) The scientifi c term “gr oundwa-

ter,” is used instead of the older “sub-

terranean water s” or “underground

wat ers .”

A. The comma aft er groundwater

should appear after the closi ng quota-

tion marks.

B. A comma should appear af ter

the phrase subterranean waters.

C. The comma after g roundwater

should be deleted.

D. The sentence is correctly

punctuat ed.

2) Rhode Island’s Charter of 1663

was the fi rst to use the formulation

“liberty of c onscience.” The principal

drafter, Roger Will iams, was a man

of extreme and idiosyncr atic reli-

gious views who was ba nished from

Puritan Ma ssachusetts. He wrote fre-

quently, eloquently, and vituperatively

in defense of freedom of conscience.

A. The comma aft er eloquently is

wrong and should be deleted.

B. The apostrophe after Rho de

Islan d is incorrect bec ause the state

doesn’t actually “pos sess” the Charter

of 1663. It should read The Rhode

Island Charter of 1663 ...

C. The comma after Will iams is

wrong and should be deleted.

D. The passage is correct ly

punctuat ed.

3) I emphasize the democratic

themes of that message—socia l

responsibility and tra nsformative

possibilities—over its author’s more

liberal rendition—ethnocentr ism and

individualism—to bring g reater clar-

ity to the subject.

A. The sentence has too ma ny

dashes: the maximum should be

three.

B. The sentence has too many

dashes: the maximum should be t wo.

C. The sentence has too many

dashes: the maximum should be one.

D. That the sentence has dashes

at all makes it unsu itable for legal

writi ng.

E. The word its should be it’s.

4) The relatively high participa-

tion rate among older people provides

a concrete example of this phenom-

enon: many commentators argue

that the political power of gr oups

like AA RP leads to policies that favor

the elderly at the expense of chil-

dren, who by defi nition cannot vote.

But most of the reform argument is

not ultimately trained on fi nancia l

inequalities at all.

A. A comma should appear af ter

But.

B. The colon should be a semicolon.

C. The comma after childre n should

be deleted.

D. The passage is correct ly punctu-

ated as writ ten.

PUNCTUATION QUIZ Based on guideline s in The Redbook: A Manual on Legal St yle and The Chicago Manual of Style.

The ABA Journal follows the Associated Press Style book as a reference guide .

Practice