The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

by Gordon, Karen Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780395628836
• ISBN10: 0395628830
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-07-10
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

For over a decade THE WELL TEMPERED SENTENCE has provided instruction and pleasure to the wariest student and the most punctilious scholar alike. Now Karen Elizabeth Gordon has revised and enlarged her classic handbook with fuller explanations of the rules of punctuation, additional whimsical graphics, and further character development and drama -- all the while redeeming punctuation from the perils of boredom. For anyone who has despaired of opening a punctuation handbook (but whose sentences despair without one), THE NEW WELL TEMPERED SENTENCE will teach you clearly and simply where to place a comma and how to use an apostrophe. And as you master the elusive slashes, dots, and dashes that give expression to our most perplexing thoughts, you will find yourself in the grip of a bizarre and beguiling comedy of manners. Long-time fans will delight in the further intrigues of cover girl Loona, the duke and duchess, and the mysterious Rosie and Nimrod. The New Well-Tempered Sentence is sure to entertain while teaching you everything you want to know about punctuation. Never before has punctuation been so much fun!

Author Biography

Karen Elizabeth Gordon is the author of the classic and comic reference books The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, The New Well-Tempered Sentence, and Torn Wings and Faux Pas. Her wanderlusting fiction includes The Ravenous Muse, The Red Shoes and Other Tattered Tales, and Paris Out of Hand. She lives in Berkeley, California and Paris.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
The Exclamation Point!	1	(7)
The Question Mark	8	(7)
The Period	15	(6)
The Comma	21	(38)
The Semicolon	59	(7)
The Colon	66	(10)
The Hyphen	76	(9)
The Dash	85	(10)
Quotation Marks	95	(10)
Italics	105	(7)
Parentheses	112	(8)
Brackets	120	(5)
The Slash	125	(5)
The Apostrophe	130	(9)
Ellipses	139