Wednesday, March 6, 2019

punctuation - How to Punctuate Two Quoted Independent Clauses Within a Declarative Sentence




I'm wondering the best way to punctuate and/or format this sentence, especially the part concerning subjunctive case, in which two examples are put in quotes:



In this book, I kept finding irregular verb tense problems (especially lie/lay, sit/set and run), lack of subjunctive case (i.e., "He wished he was," instead of [the correct form] "He wished he were.") and repeated typos (e.g., "were" instead of "where," and vice versa).



(Note: This is for an online review and italics is not available.)


Answer



If this is for an online review, perhaps you should consider making the paragraph into a list:





In this book I found a variety of grammatical and textual errors such as the following:




  • irregular verb tense problems - especially lie/lay, sit/set and run

  • lack of subjunctive mood - e.g. "He wished he was" instead of "He wished he were"

  • repeated typos - e.g. "were" instead of "where" and vice versa.




I use a format like this on sites like Amazon quite regularly.




The added benefit is that, particularly with the quoted text, you don't need to worry about punctuating the quotes as lists don't require full sentences or proper punctuation.


No comments:

Post a Comment