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Anonymous Posted 20 years ago
Grammar

Few basic questions

Hi,



I hope someone can enlighten me.



I have a few basic questions about punctuation, especially within speach marks.



I was always under the impression that when using speech marks you ended with a full stop then the next sentence started with a capital letter like this :



"Hello." Replied the man. "How are you today?"



Am I totally wrong? Because I'm seeing more and more people putting comma's and not capitalizing the new sentence, like this:



"Hello," replied the man. "How are you today?"



So now I think I'm overdoing it punctuation wise and if I'm completely wrong I don't want to be giving the kids wrong information.



Also, is a question mark treated in the same way as a full stop? As in you capitalize the first letter after it.



Any clarification here would be fabulous.



Thanks in advance.
  

Top answer

" Replied the man. " Is very rare in the literature. I'd say forget about it.

— Marius Hancu

  • " Replied the man.
  • " Is very rare in the literature.
  • I'd say forget about it.
  • The other is the idiomatic way of reporting things.
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6 Answers
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"Hello." Replied the man. "How are you today?"
Is very rare in the literature.
I'd say forget about it.

The other is the idiomatic way of reporting things.

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Thanks for thee reply.

So both are right? It just depends on the writer which is used?
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Anonymous So both are right? It just depends on the writer which is used?
I think only this one is right:
"Hello," replied the man. "How are you today?"

The man replied "Hello."
You can't separate this into too sentences with a dot, under normal circumstances.

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make a search at Yahoo with
"Hello replied the"
(quotation marks are important)
and you will see what examples show up.
most, if not all, are using the comma ...
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I was using that sentance as an example. I see the comma used a lot in writing these days but I always thought that whatever is said in speach marks was to end with a fill stop.
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Speech that continues does not need to end in a full stop, unless it is clearly the end of a sentence. Speech can also end with a question mark or an exclamation mark.
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