Punctuation, Part 2

In the following post I will reflect on three more punctuation topics as discussed in the textbook, Rules for Writers. As grammar is not a strong suit of mine, I will then discuss how I used the punctuation topics to self-edit my draft of Project 2.

ZIPNON. "Punctuation Symbols 3d Rainbow Gradient Bright"
6/21/2015 via Pixabay. CCO Public Domain/ FAQ License.

Quotation Marks 
For me, quotation marks around quotes was something I learned a long time ago, therefore it was always second nature to include them. However, what to use with quotation marks was never really emphasized. For example, I did not know that a formal introduction to a quote was pared with a colon, or that colon and semicolons went outside of the quotation marks.

Also, with MLA in-text citations, I was never sure if the period was included after the citation when the quote had a question mark or exclamation mark-it is.

One example from my text is:
Ingraffea explained his qualification in the oil and gas industry in his interview by saying, “I spent 20, 25 years working with the oil and gas industry...helping them to figure out how best to get oil and gas out of rock.” 3
          To introduce the quote I used a phrase similar to "he said" like in Rules for Writers" so I used a           comma after my introductory phrase. Also, I included a period in the quotation marks and                   followed the quotation marks with my citation.

End Punctuation 
End punctuation, like its name suggests, is the type of punctuation found at the end of the sentence. I was happy to finally have it clarified that if an abbreviation is found at the end of a sentence there is only one period at the end. Also, multiple question marks can be used in a list even with incomplete sentences.

Other Punctuation Marks 
One thing that I found surprising was in quotations when a full sentence is removed from the quote this is signified with more than an ellipse, it is shown with a period before the ellipse so four periods in a row.

Another punctuation rule that was new to me was using dashes to separate nouns or noun phrase that that include commas. The dashes can show the importance of the appositive, so the phrase is not confused with the other commas.

One example from my text: 
And now the reason I bring it up in the context of politics is that the right, the political right uses this as a central case study for liberals getting science wrong...And
While revising I searched my quotes to see if I omitted a full sentence. Because I did not remove a full sentence, just fragments, I used regular ellipses instead of ellipses preceded by a period.