Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010

Punctuation don'ts
Punctuation
Style

1. Titles and Headings. Do not put a period after a title or heading, even if it is a complete sentence. You may put a question mark or exclamation point.

4.3 Headings Can Be Sentences

4.3 Can Headings Be Sentences?

2. Subjects-Verbs-Objects. Do not put a comma between a subject and its verb or a verb and its direct object, even if they are long. If a subject or verb is so long that you feel you must have a comma, revise the sentence.

NOT: A sentence whose subject goes on forever because it includes many complex subordinate clauses and long phrases that give readers no place to take a mental breath, may seem to some students to demand a comma to show where the subject ends and the verb begins.

For a subject that consists of a long list, put a colon or dash after the list and add a summative subject such as “all these.”

The president, the vice president, the secretaries of the departments, senators, members of the House of Representatives, and Supreme Court justices—all these take an oath that pledges them to uphold the Constitution.

3. Doubled Punctuation Marks. Do not put two periods together.

NOT:

I work for Abco Inc..

Rowling, J. K.. Harry Potter and . . .

BUT:

I work for Abco Inc.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and . . .

Omit a comma that occurs next to a question mark, exclamation point, or dash.

NOT:

When you ask yourself So what?, you find the significance of your research.

While I cannot endorse your proposal—it just feels wrong to me—, I won't oppose it.

BUT:

When you ask yourself So what? you find the significance of your research.

While I cannot endorse your proposal—it just feels wrong to me—I won't oppose it.

While I cannot endorse your proposal (it just feels wrong to me), I won't oppose it.