College Composition

College Composition Study Guide

o “Teen Struck by Car” from Th B ston Globe o “The Barber and His Wife” from Sweeney Todd

Quotations: Whenever you copy another writer’s words verbatim, you must enclose their words in quotation marks. How you punctuate the quote depends on how and where you are using the quote. If you quote a complete sentence, but add your own words, treat the quotation as you would a clause. • “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful,” is the first line of Gone with the Wind . If you quote a complete sentence, but add nothing more, enclose the sentence in quotation marks. • “Give me liberty or give me death.” If using a period or comma, enclose the mark within the quotation marks. Colons and semi-colons go outside the quotation marks. Quotations that are a piece of dialogue are separated from additional words by a comma. • Matthew said, “We are out of eggs.” Colons: Colons are used to introduce a list, or to indicate that the second part of a sentence is an explanation of a term or idea from the first part of the sentence. • My backpack contained all the clothes I needed: shorts, shirts, underwear, and pajamas. • There is only one thing left to do: win the game! Semi-colons: Semi-colons are most often used as a way to join independent clauses in a compound sentence. However, they can also be used to replace commas if the use of commas would be confusing. Some lists of information include items that would normally be separated by commas. • I have worked in Denver, CO; Phoenix, AZ; and Portland, OR. The semi-colons distinguish which items are meant to be read together, such as Denver, CO. Parenthesis: Parentheses are used by writers to provide additional information, such as an explanation of a technical term. Parentheses signal to the reader that they may not need the information contained inside them. • The former factory building (built in 1874) was converted into apartments. Built in 1874 is not information that is crucial for understanding the sentence.

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