"Stops", Or How to Punctuate / A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students

A practical guide presents punctuation as a system for marking the arrangement of ideas to aid readers and then examines individual marks and their uses, including the full stop, comma, semicolon, colon, question and exclamation points, dash, brackets and parentheses, inverted commas, italics, hyphen, apostrophe and ellipsis. It sets out rules with illustrative examples for grouping words, managing clauses and conjunctions, handling vocatives and repetitions, and distinguishing alternatives from apposition. The handbook also treats editorial tasks such as references to notes, correction of proofs, and typographic choices for foreign words, names, and titles. Advice balances formal rules with discretionary judgment aimed at clear expression.