Placing punctuation with speech marks and parentheses

The English language is notoriously tricky, mostly because of the numerous subtle nuances within - silent letters, placement of apostrophes, and variations between UK and US spelling. Of them all, apostrophes and working out where to place punctuation with parentheses (brackets) or quotation marks.

An example for punctuation around speech marks and brackets could be:

He said, "Paul told me to go to the market and fetch his soup".

or:

He said, "Paul told me to go to the market and fetch his soup."

With with brackets/parentheses:

 At the market (which was only down the road.)

or

At the market (which was only down the road).

While an example for the use of apostrophes could be:

"The Rolling Stones' first chart single"

or

"The Rolling Stones first chart single"

Because phonetically there is no difference, many writers assume no apostrophe is needed, yet that is a mistake just as it would be if it were missing from a name:

"Ross coat is upstairs" is wrong; rather, it should be: "Ross' coat is upstairs"

Although the rules themselves are actually simple, they can trip up even established writers because there is no way of knowing what to do based on how it sounds. So, to make it simple, apostrophes go after the existing 's' (Rolling Stones) if it's possessive. A good way to remember it is by imagining a name without an 's' at the end and determining if it would need one in this context. For example, "Coldplays new album" would obviously need to be "Coldplay's new album". Thus, if it's a noun with an 's' at the end, add an apostrophe afterwards - "The Rolling Stones' new album". Simple, right?

It's no more complicated with punctuation with quote marks. Simply put, if the quote actually included it, add it within the quote; if not, add it outside. For example, if you quote a person to the end of their sentence, the full stop goes inside:

"Turn left at the top of the stairs for the bathroom."

If, however, it's not the end of the sentence, place it outside:

They told me to "turn left at the top of the stairs".

With brackets/parentheses, it's incredibly easy: if they are used within an existing sentence then the punctuation mark goes at the end, outside the bracket, otherwise the whole sentence is left wide open:

It started to rain (and Angie liked that).

If, on the other hand, the sentence ends prior to the use of brackets, the parentheses become their own sentence and so the full stop is placed inside:

It started to rain. (Angie always enjoyed the rain.)

That's pretty much all there is to it. The only exception is if you're using US English, in which case a full stop goes inside a quote mark even if it's technically incorrect - for example, if you list a song in quote marks (as you should), it would be thus:

The single that really made them famous was "Fun Time."

Even though, of course, the song title doesn't have a full stop in it, and placing it within quote marks would infer that it does. It's a strange anomaly with American English that a quote will hoover up punctuation that should come after, but, right or wrong, when in Rome...

When Should I Use a Semicolon?

For many people, one of the most confusing aspects of English grammar is the semicolon - when should it be used? Can I use a comma instead? In fact, the semicolon is often seen where a comma should be, thus breaking up a sentence that shouldn't be.

The following image should help clarify when to use a semicolon:

So, if a clause is dependent, meaning it could not be a complete sentence on its own, then a comma should be used. If a clause is independent, a semicolon should be used.

The hyphen, the em-dash and the en-dash

A lot of people aren't aware what an en-dash or em-dash is, let alone how to use them. Unlike apostrophes and semi-colons, misusing them won't affect the flow or meaning of a sentence. That being said, there is a difference and it's important to learn it to avoid schoolboy errors.

A hyphen is what's used to link two words, hence hyphenate. It's the short dash that we see quite often, such as 'semi-colons' above. An en-dash looks like a longer dash and is used to replace 'to' when mentioning periods of time, like January–December, 1990–1991, 9–5 etc. An em-dash is what you see when a dash pops up mid-sentence, such as "no one – and I mean no one - has ever done that"

Microsoft Word will generally create an em-dash for you, if you put a hyphen in followed by a space and a word, the hyphen will change to an em-dash. If not, on a standard PC keyboard, ctrl+hyphen should generate one.

Apostrophes: What they are and what they're not

As an editor, one of the most common things I notice is a person's confusion over how to use an apostrophe. Some use them anytime an 's' finishes a word, others are hit-and-miss, using them correctly in some instances and not in others, and others still don't use them at all. So just how should they be used?

As a general rule, an apostrophe is used to indicate a possessive i.e. something is the possession of someone, not to pluralise something. For instance, if a line read "John's hat is over there" the apostrophe is used because the hat belongs to John. Another example could be "the dog's bed belongs in that corner". Again, the bed belongs to the dog; the absence of an apostrophe indicates a plural, like "the photos are all beautiful". Using an apostrophe in "photos" would change it to being possessive when it should be plural.

In the case of a plural that ends with an 's' (sailors) and possessive, the apostrophe is placed after the end 's'. For instance, if a researcher was named Mullins, a sentence could be "Mullins' study"; if it read "Mullin's study" the apostrophe would be incorrectly placed, changing the name. (If a plural doesn't end in an 's', such as 'children', an apostrophe is used.)

Apostrophes are also used when two words are merged (known as a contraction), like 'that' and 'is' to becomes 'that's', or 'it' and 'is' to become 'it's'. This is the exception to the possessive rule.

'That's' always has an apostrophe, it's never plural. As an example, "that's the correct temperature", is "that is the correct temperature".

However, there are instances where 'its' doesn't require an apostrophe. Understandably, this can be confusing for some writers. An apostrophe isn't required when it doesn't mean 'it is'. For example, "the main selling point of the television is its screen size". This seems to contradict the rule of the possessive apostrophe, but 'it' is a pronoun, which have their own rules for possessives. Other examples are 'theirs' and 'yours'.

The other main offenders people mistakenly use apostrophe is after dates and acronyms/initalisms. If you bought some DVDs, it is plural and so no apostrophe is to be used, just as they aren't used for other plurals. The same is true with dates, the 1990s saw a number of global changes, not the 1990's.


Apostrophes can seem confusing, but bear the few simple rules in mind and it'll become easy.

1) Plurals don't require an apostrophe, even if they are acronyms or dates.
2) Apostrophes are used as the possessive (John's, not Johns as this would indicate there is more than one John being mentioned) or or in a contraction
3) Pronouns don't require apostrophes for the possessive