Got Gold? Need Punctuation Pointers!

The Roadshow is traveling around buying up gold and silver, antique toys and other goodies. Their full page ad is, for me, a treasure trove of poor punctuation, and I will share some of it with you over the coming days.

Let's begin with the most confusing problem, which is what to do with periods and commas when using quotation marks. Here is one example from the ad:

"Old tin windup toys...are in great demand now." said Davis, "Especially those that are character related."

Whoops! The first error comes after the word NOW. Because "said Davis" comes AFTER the quote, there should be a comma, not a period, after NOW. The second error is with the word ESPECIALLY. It should not be capitalized because it continues the sentence that starts before "said Davis." Because "said Davis" comes in the MIDDLE of a complete sentence, there should be a comma after "Davis" as well.

I can't resist also mentioning that the word WIND-UP, according to my trusty American Heritage Dictionary and my personal brain, has a hyphen in it when used as an adjective to describe a noun. When used as a verb + adverb as in something like "I'll wind up this explanation as soon as possible," there is no hyphen. To my knowledge, there is NO instance in which this should be spelled WINDUP.

Therefore, this sentence should read as follows:

"Old tin wind-up toys...are in great demand now," said Davis, "especially those that are character related."

Here is another quotation mark goof involving the last sentence of the same ad:

"We help people sort through their coins for unique dates....See you at the Roadshow." said Fuller.

Once again, because "said Fuller" comes AFTER what is quoted, there should be a comma, not a period, after ROADSHOW and then, as given, a period after FULLER. The statement should read as follows:

"We help people sort through their coins for unique dates....See you at the Roadshow," said Fuller.

Please stay tuned. My next blog entry will deal with the apostrophe errors in the same ad.