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PUNCTUATION QUERIES

Assuming that 50% of the readers of this blog are teachers of English, can either of you enlighten me on the following points? They are keeping me awake at night.
  1. When writing a sentence between parentheses, should one put the full stop (period for you yanks) inside the brackets, outside the brackets, or both?
  2. In the following sentence, should a question mark be placed after the word "why", or at the end of the sentence? Why is a different, trickier question
  3. When the bloody hell should one hyphenate?
  4. Does the employment of an exclamation mark enhance or neutralise the comic impact of a sentence?
I look forward to your interaction.
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Comments

Wally Windsor said…
Ya-a-a-a-wn, stre-e-e-e-tch... Ooh, do what? Somebody say summat?
ZZZzzz...
4 October 2007 at 12:35
M C Ward said…
...is the correct answer.
4 October 2007 at 12:41
El Gringo Vasco said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
4 October 2007 at 14:45
El Gringo Vasco said…
2. no question mark, anywhere, as they normally indicate a rise in intonation, and I don't detect any in your sentence. :-)
4 October 2007 at 14:54
M C Ward said…
At last we're getting somewhere...
4 October 2007 at 17:08
EnglishTeacher365 said…
I can help - but I need to find my big book on awful English grammar and punctuation first! Can you wait till tomorrow, dear MC?
4 October 2007 at 17:14
John Zachary Lee said…
I'm going to be a CDF and actually answer your questions to the best of my ability. (And for those not living in Brazil, "CDF" means "Bottom of Iron", or nerd/swot.)

Not sure I grasped your second question. The following look OK to me, depending on whether you're affirming or asking rhetorically:

"Why?" is a different, trickier question.

"Why?" is a different, trickier question?

Hyphenation is to a large extent a matter of taste - the Economist magazine is big on it, too much so from my point of view. I use it only when necessary to make things easier to understand, eg: "She bought a Chinese-made camera." Without the hyphen, the "made" might look like a past tense (rather than past participle) at first glance, thereby tiring the reader.

The excessive use of exclamation marks can kill humour by removing all sutlety. Double or triple exclamation marks should be avoided at all cost, unless used ironically.

Those are my off the hoof (or "off-the-hoof"?) thoughts. What do you think?
4 October 2007 at 17:17
M C Ward said…
englishteacher365, I'll be facing another restless night, but there's no hurry, as long as nobody complains about my punctuation in the meantime. zachary, the second question depended upon the "why" NOT having quotation marks - but this may well be mere flimflam on my part - I suggest we wait for englishteacher365's riposte, he's very probably the daddy in this siuation I feel. Can of Special Brew anyone?
4 October 2007 at 17:29
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