Quotation Marks

Always place commas and periods within close quotation marks. In England, the custom is to write She said he was "intelligent". But in the United States, the convention is to write She said he was "intelligent."

You might notice that placing quotation marks around the word intelligent casts doubt on the man's IQ. Maybe he is not intelligent, the quotation marks imply. This use of quotation marks is but one of many ways punctuation can be used to convey important meanings, but writers who do not know the conventions of punctuation will not be able to make use of these important writing tools nor will they truly understand the writings of other people who do know the conventions.

"Among" or "Between"?

In most cases, use the preposition among when referring to three or more things and use between when referring to just two.

Both of the following sentences are correct:

• Among the residents of the city, there was universal agreement that Kristine was destined for success as both a librarian and an author.

• Just between you and me, this book should be on every writer's reading list.

By the way, among and between are prepositions, so their initial letters should be lowercased in titles.