From The Personal Style Sheet

of

William de Kypia
—_.—_.—

Punctuation marks are never mandatory.

We always have choices about which marks to include. If a
certain mark would disrupt the flow of your sentence, don't use it.

For example, I do not use commas to separate quotations
from the main discourse, i.e., in speech (or dialogue) tags.

"You should use commas with speech tags," they told him.
"I don't like them, never have, never will" Will replied.
~
I do employ the serial (Oxford or St. Irenaeus) comma:

Will's favorite breakfast is coy —
coffee, oatmeal, and yogurt.
~
And I place commas and periods outside
quotation marks unless the punctuation
is part of the quote (British style):

The sign said_“No Parking On The Green-Coloured Grass”.

versus

Then the guy said_“Don't ever come back here again.”
~
But I prefer the American style of double quotes
for the main quote and single quotes for
the secondary (or nested) quote:

My mother screamed.“Not in this house!”

and

He said_“Then my mother screamed.‘Not in this house!’ ”
~
My use of opening and closing quotation
marks when a direct quote extends across
more than a single paragraph is variable.

Here is an extract from a poem about the
night a certain poet met one of the muses:

“And one Polaroid to prove that we actually—”

“OK, you can throw in dessert though the
picture will not be of archival quality.

Chemical changes cause the colors
to shift and fade. The emulsion will
dry out, crack, and then flake off.

Soon nothing will remain of our
encounter except your puerile
and delusional fabrications.”

Some stylesheets require opening
quotation marks at the beginning of
every paragraph. Mine doesn't.


~
We have choices about formatting too. I think that
It's lots of fun to use .lots of different .fonts.
~
These are my rules. I reserve the right to violate any
or all of them at any time for any reason or none.
__________________

◀️ Back To Divertissements
On To Metapoetics III ▶️