Do you have the wind "sewed up" yet? Watch your usage!

The writer of a recent letter to the editor in The Birmingham News created a weird mixed metaphor while attempting to quote the Bible. Here is what he wrote:



The Good Book says, "Sew the wind, and you will reap the whirl wind": that is exactly what we have in today's schools.



Whoops! SEW is what you do with a needle and thread. This writer meant SOW, which is how you scatter seed on soil so it will grow.



The correct quotation from Hosea 8:7 is this: "They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind...."



There is another WHOOPS in the writer's attempted quotation. WHIRLWIND is one word.



BONUS POINT #1: I will give this writer a huge bonus point, however, for getting the punctuation with the quotation marks and the colon correct. The rule is that colons and semicolons ALWAYS go outside the quotation marks.



Here is how he should have written his comment:



The Good Book says, "They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind": that is exactly what we have in today's schools.



This writer, who is a teacher, was defending the principal who shaved off half the eyebrow of a defiant student who was using his eyebrow to display a gang symbol at school.

BONUS POINT #2: A mixed metaphor is a literary image that combines elements of two different images in a confusing way. By using the word SEW (needle and thread image) and combining it with REAP (harvest image), this writer created a mixed metaphor. He meant to create the image of a person sowing seed and then reaping the harvest of what he planted.



NOTE OF WELCOME: Welcome to all of the participants in my Grammar and Usage Brush-up workshop in Montgomery last week. It is because of a question from one of you that I added today's bonus point about quotation mark rules. I will present the three basic rules on quotation mark usage at your second workshop on May 26.



If any other readers would like to have those three basic rules covered in one blog entry, just let me know.

Question Mark? Quotation Marks? Which Where?

One of my readers sent a question this morning about how to use quotation marks with a question mark. Her example sentence read something like this:

I knew to combine the two words into a compound word, but could you blog about the "why" and the "when"?

She wanted to know if she had been correct in placing the question mark OUTSIDE the quotation marks. The answer is YES.

Here is a simple two-part rule for deciding when to put the question mark OUTSIDE the quotation marks and when to put it INSIDE:

PART A: If the material INSIDE the quotation marks is NOT a question, as in her example, the question mark goes OUTSIDE the quotation marks. Here are a few more examples:

Have you ever read Fitzgerald's short story, "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"?

How would you define the word "defeat"?

Did you actually hear Mr. Weston say that he was "outraged"?

PART B: If the material INSIDE the quotation marks IS a question, the question mark goes INSIDE the quotation marks, as in these examples:

The witness responded with his own question, "What do you think, Mr. Prosecutor?"

Denis has written a short story titled, "What now?"

"Where's the beef?" asked Clara Peller in 1984.

BONUS POINT: The rule (at least for now) for commas and periods is even simpler. Just remember that COMMAS and PERIODS ALWAYS go inside the quotation marks--no exceptions.

There, that wasn't too complicated, was it?

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.

Quotation Marks...And Then Quotation Marks

The following sentence appeared in the "Jobs" feature of The Birmingham News on Sunday:

“Their attitude is that, ‘You’re very lucky that you’ve got me as your (accountant/physician/salesman),” said Robicheaux.

The writer got the OUTSIDE set of quotation marks correct.

• Double quotations marks around what Robichaux said
• A comma INSIDE the quotation marks at the end of the quote when the speaker credit is at the end

The writer was also correct in putting a single quotation mark before "You're" because he was inserting another quote inside the first one. However, he apparently got busy and forgot the second single quotation mark at the end of the "quote within a quote." The sentence should look like this:

“Their attitude is that, ‘You’re very lucky that you’ve got me as your (accountant/physician/salesman),'” said Robicheaux.

Notice that you have three quotation marks together where BOTH the outside quote and the inside quote end.

Here are some good reminders about using quotation marks:

• Put quotation marks at the beginning AND the end of anything you copy word for word from what someone said.
• ALWAYS put commas and periods INSIDE the quotation marks.
• Use single quotation marks around anything you quote inside something you are already quoting.

Here are a couple examples:

The Birmingham News has a Sunday column called "Jobs."

"We have a Bull Connor problem," Condoleezza Rice said recently as she described the distrust Iraqis feel towards their police forces. She was recalling her childhood during the turbulent 1960s in Birmingham.