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Capitalization, Quotation Marks, Italics & Underlining

Usage & Mechanics

Capitalization

What words do you capitalize? Write down all that you know.

Capitalization

1. The pronoun “I”2. Proper nouns and adjectives3. School subjects, holidays, days of the week, months, geographical

names4. First word in a sentence or in a quote5. Direction words as regions of the country6. Important words in titles7. Titles of people, names of people (without “my”)

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/592/01/

Quotation Marks

1. Around DIRECT quotations not INDIRECT (a person’s exact speech or thoughts)

Julie said, “We are studying Jamestown.”Sara said that it was settled in 1607.

Quotation marks in dialogue

2. Place end marks inside the quotation marks.

“What do you know about the settlers?” asked Sara.

Remember to INDENT a new paragraph each time the speaker changes.

Interrupted quotations

3. One sentence needs quotation marks for all direct quotes.“They came on 3 ships,” said Julie, “and were men and boys.”

4. Two sentences needs a period after the interrupter, and then write the second quoted sentence as a full quotation.“One of them was John Rolfe,” said Sara. “He married Pocahontas.”

Quot. Marks with other punctuation

5. A comma or period used with a direct quotation goes inside the final quotation marks. Place a ? or ! inside the final quotation mark if the end mark is part of the quotation. Place a ? or ! outside the final quotation mark if the end mark is part of the entire sentence, not part of the quotation.

Examples

“The test is tomorrow,” said Alec, “so I must study.”

Seth asked, “Do you think you’ll do well?”

Did you say, “I got an A on the last test”?

Underlining vs. Italics

Underline (when handwriting) or italicize (when typing) the titles of long publications. Book, play, long poem Magazine, newspaper Movie, television series Long piece of music, album Works of art, paintings. Air, sea, space crafts Words and letters used as names for themselves Foreign words

Quotation marks for titles

Short stories Chapter from book Short poem Article Episode of TV program Song