Every Rose

Caroline Huber’s Sentence Handbook

Grammar and the City!            

This sentence handbook was an extremely useful way to learn punctuation rules.  I think this way was much different than any other way I had learned grammar before, very creative, and very useful.  In order to remember the rules better, I used quotations and storylines from my favorite series, Sex and the City. I hope you enjoy! 

The Period. 

The period is used to mark the end of a declarative or imperative sentence:                       

You can never own too many pairs of shoes.                       

We had such a fantastic connection.                       

Carrie wrote in her weekly column, “welcome to the age of un-innocence. No one has breakfast at Tiffany's and no one has affairs to remember.” 

The period is never to be used at the end of a sentence that is part of another sentence.  In other words, there is never a sentence with two periods:

Her embarrassing wipe-out in Dior (she slipped and everything came out of her purse) encouraged her to buy everything.                 

Samantha’s relieved sigh, “Thank you love,” was appreciated by Smith.   

The period goes inside the parentheses enclosing an independent, freestanding sentence:

Carrie stood up from picking up the remains of her broken necklace and    found herself looking into my eyes.  (I wish he would get her out of Paris and back to New York and the girls.) Then she went back to sobbing over her bad luck.   

The period always goes inside quotation marks at the end of a sentence:

As Samantha looked in the mirror, she said, “look at all these wrinkles.”                       

Big opined, “you're the loves of her life and a guy's just lucky to come in  fourth.” 

The question mark? 

The question mark is used after a direct question:

Who is this?                       

How much are those shoes?                       

What if I had never met you?                       

What are your measurements (I want to make your bridesmaid gown)? 

A request politely phrased as a question does not end in a question mark:

Would you please remove your shoes before walking on my brand new white carpet.                       

Will you please forget about the fact that I fell flat on my face in the middle of Dior.  

Only when a question mark is part of the quoted or parenthetical material does it go inside the quotation marks or parentheses:

Samantha asked Carrie, “would you like another cocktail?”

Aleksandr asked, “Is this really how one finds love?”                       

Do you agree with Carrie about Lexi being “the it girl”?                       

You blew me off for a piece of politically incorrect meat? 

The exclamation point! 

The exclamation point is used after an exclamatory word, phrase, or sentence:

Carrie exclaimed, “I’m Homeless! I’ll be a bag lady! A Fendi bag lady, but a bag lady!”                       

I heard the weather this morning but they didn't say anything about a shitstorm!                       

Carrie looked at Big, very upset, and exclaimed, “if you’re tired of New York, you take a napa, you don't move to Napa!” 

Only when an exclamation point is part of the quoted or parenthetical material does it go inside quotation marks or parentheses:

After seeing the firefighter stripper, Samantha hollered, “hello 911, I’m on fire!”                       

He never gave her a reason, he simply left her a post-it note reading, “it’s over”!                       

He told me he loved me (I think it’s a little early for the L-word mister!).              

The comma,

The comma is used between independent clauses (independent clauses have their own noun and verb) of equal value that are short and have no commas in them.  Note the consistent verb tense:

The girls drank, they slept (around), and they shopped their days away.    

The comma is used between two independent clauses joined by coordinating conjunction, such as “and”, “but”, “or”, “nor”, “neither”, “yet”, or “so.”  If the dependant phrase is really short, however, no comma is needed. 

She was too angry to take Big back after he cheated on her, but she was   too in love to let him go.                       

Either those are the most beautiful shoes on earth, or I’ve died and gone to heaven!                       

Richard tried to explain, but Samantha was through with all the lies.                       

It appeared that he was done with the conversation, so she ran out the       door and down the stairs.                         

She raised her hand and hopped into the smoky cab.             

The comma is used after a dependant clause, usually a fairly long one, that comes before an independent clause. 

When she called down to the door man he sent up her guest, the rest of the night was a blur.                  

As far as she knew, She was his first and his last.    

Two or more verbs having the same subject are not separated by a comma. 

Carrie counted each pair of Manolo’s and then tried them on.  

Samantha picked up her drink and threw it in his face. 

Use commas to set off the one or ones spoken to in a direct address.

Carrie inquired, “Big, when are you going to realize I love you?”                       

Samantha, please stop trying to sleep with my boyfriend.  

Appositives- words that follow a noun or pronoun and identify it- are set off by commas.

Miranda, the mommy of the bunch, is considering leaving Manhattan.                        

Stanford, charlotte’s gay shopping buddy, lights up the show with his          bright outfits and shiny bald head. 

A comma is used between two adjectives when they modify the same noun:

Suddenly Miranda noticed the awkward, friendly relationship that existed     between her two lovers.               

If, however, the first adjective modifies the idea put forward in the second adjective and the noun combined, no comma is used between the adjectives.  This rule is often a matter of taste:

Samantha emerged wearing nothing but a wrinkled green bed sheet.   

Use commas to set off mild parenthetical phrases and interjections that cause a break in the flow of thought:

Carrie exclaimed,” Yes, I would love to go home with you!” 

Well, it appears Carrie has found the love of her life after all.

Well it was, after all, just a long drunken night. 

Three or more elements in a series are separated by commas, and a comma comes before the conjunction that joins the last two statements in the list. 

As Samantha stared him up and down she saw, abs, biceps, and a large   package.                 

The gift bags were full of Gucci, Prada, juicy, and Manolo’s.   

Commas are used to set off conjunction adverbs, such as “however”, “moreover”, and “therefore”

She knew she needed that pair of shoes.  However, it seems she’s            misplaced her visa.                         

Moreover, the party was her idea first!           

Commas go inside quotation marks but they go outside and at the end of parentheses:

“Hang on, removing that is my job,” Big told Carrie as she began to remove her coat.                       

She hoped (along with the rest of the viewers), that Big would finally man-up and marry her.   

Commas are used to separate parts of addresses and names of geographical places or political divisions:

Carrie Bradshaw, 124, 15^th Street, Manhattan, New York.    

The semicolon; 

A semicolon is used in place of a comma when a significant break in the flow of the sentence is needed. 

Charlotte spends the daytime dreaming of baby baskets and diaper arrangements; at night she lays awake next to her sterile husband, thinking up how she can get pregnant.                         

Be careful; these shoes will cost you three hundred bucks if you wreck them with that cheap boxed wine!                       

Miranda tends to eat her feelings; hence the lack of icecream, oreos, and potato chips in her kitchen.   

A semicolon is used before an adverb that separates two clauses in a compound sentence. 

Carrie wrote, “When you're young, your whole life is about the pursuit of fun, then you grow up and learn to be cautious; you could break a bone, or a heart.”                       

Samantha wanted to jump into the elevator with the hunky fireman; however, she remembered she was on a date with Richard.      

The colon: 

The colon is used to introduce a part of a sentence that exemplifies, restates, or explains the proceeding part.  There is no need to capitalize the first word following the colon:

Samantha has lived a very pleasurable life: her last twenty years were spent in a number of different beds with a number of different men.  

Miranda loves trashy magazines: she gets excited reading about Hollywood gossip. 

The colon is used to introduce a series or list.  Note, keep the elements in the list in the same grammatical construct, especially in terms of verb tense. 

Carrie had three true loves: her friends, her column, and her shoes.                     

The hyphen-  

The hyphen connects the parts of some compound words used as nouns or adjectives:

Charlotte told them she wasn’t going to replace a man with some battery-  operated device. 

The hyphen joins compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine and is used to express fractions:

She found herself caught in a catch-thirty-eight.    

The hyphen connects a long list of adjectives that modify a noun, particularly when the hyphenated phrase was coined by the author of the sentence:

They say the average 33-year-old woman has sex 3.5 times a week. I'd like to know who that woman is.                       

I knew he wanted me because during my lean-in-and-kiss-me-good-night move, I accidentally on purpose felt his pop-up-and-say-hello. 

The dash-  

The dash shows a break in the continuity or thought in a sentence.  A dash is a little bit stronger than a comma.  On most computers, the dash is formed by typing two hyphens – so that it literally looks like a dash.  Please note that there are no spaces before and after the dash.  Dashes can be used in the middle or the end of the sentence- and they can be very effective:

Big attempted to comfort Carrie by telling her, “the women who wrote that book—they wrote it because they couldn't get laid, so they constructed this whole bullshit theory to make women who can get laid feel bad.”                       

Miranda opined, “You know, I have low self esteem, but I express it the healthy way—by eating a box of Double Stuff Oreos.”  

The parenthesis ( )

The parenthesis is used to enclose loosely related comments or explanations:

Most likely Samantha is somewhere (in a bed) with some man she’s never met before.                       

A parenthetical sentence within another sentence does not begin with a capital letter nor end in a period.  A freestanding parenthetical sentence in the body of a paragraph, however, requires parenthesis, a capital letter, and a period inside the closing parenthesis:

It’s hard to imagine how HBO (the network that ran Sex and the City for years) could cancel such an amazing series. (I really think they must be crazy!)  

The ellipsis… 

Use and ellipsis to indicate an omission of a word, a phrase, or a sentence.  An ellipsis is formed by making three dots with spaces before and after each dot.  If you want to indicate that and entire sentence or more has been left out, use and ellipsis plus a period (four dots) with no space before the first dot:

Every girlfriend I've had wants me to change something. Change your job, change your friends, change your attitude . . . The only thing I change is      girlfriends.                       

I don't wear vintage clothes. I hate flea markets . . . . Is it too much to ask   that he not be . . .  I don't know . . .  used? 

The quotation marks “” 

Quotation marks surround quoted material and the titles of smaller works (poems, short stories, and essays).  However, the titles of major works – like books, movies, plays, and magazines – are generally italicized or underlined:

He made really bad ones. You know, the "I Screamed When I Knew What You Did Last Summer on Elm Street" type.                       

When the girls asked how Charlotte’s date went she responded by saying, “He raped my face! I'm never seeing him again!”                       

When Charles Dickens wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," I believe he must have been having an affair with his married ex-boyfriend. 

Single quotation marks are used when a quotation is embedded within another quotation.  The bracketed phrase [sic] means that the author of the sentence is pointing out an error in the original quotation so that the reader doesn’t think the writer of the sentence is to blame for the nuance or mistake in the quotation:

Samantha told Carrie, “well, I suppose we were in a bit of a disagreement so Charlotte says,’ Is your vagina in the New York City guidebooks? Because it should be– it's the hottest spot in town– it's always open.’ Personally I thought that was pretty out of line!”  

The apostrophe’

The apostrophe is used to indicate possession by adding ‘s to all singular subjects even if the subject already ends with an s.  For most plural subjects, merely add the apostrophe to indicate that the entire group has possession of someone or something.  The apostrophe is also used to indicate the omission of a letter (s) in a word that has been turned into a contraction:

I can't believe you're all going to LA without me.                       

Carrie decided it was about time that she took Big’s MasterCard for a         shopping spree.                         

They were four of Manhattan’s finest and they were ready for the     somebodies with the somethings in their wallet.             

The Bracket [ ]

The bracket is used to enclose material that has been added or altered to a quotation, usually for clarification, by the author of the sentence:

Samantha said, “This man [Richard] said he loved me and I caught him     eating another woman's [ inappropriate word ].” 

The back slash  /

The back slash, with one space before and after the slash, is used to indicate a line break when quoting lines from a poem or lines from a play in verse form:

Cindi Lauper said it best when she said, “I come home in the morning ight /

My mother says when you gonna live your life right / Oh mother dear we're not the fortunate ones /

And girls they want to have fun / Oh girls just want to have fun!”

Commonly Misused Words 

Affect vs. Effect 

If you are referring to a thing (noun), ninety-nine out of a hundred you mean effect (result).  If you mean an action (verb), ninety-nine times out of a hundred you mean affect (to influence).                       

Apparently the fact that Samantha never had children affected the way her body responded to the cancer.  The effects the chemo had to her body were loss of hair and sex drive.   

Then there’s that one time out of a hundred where you want to use effect as a verb, and affect as a noun.  Both cases are extremely rare.  When used as a noun, affect is a psychological term for a feeling (pronounced with the accent on the first syllable):

Carrie displays a lack of affect, especially when she is in the presence of high-fashion clothing.    

When used as a verb, effect means to achieve or to bring about:                       

Her performance at the last party effected the institution of a new rule : “She’s not allowed in.”    

Accept vs. Except

Accept is always a verb and it means to receive or to agree.  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, except is a preposition or a conjunction and it means other than:                         

Charlotte didn’t accept baby gifts that cost less than one hundred dollars,    except from her favorite girlfriends.     

Very rarely except can be used as a verb, and it means to exclude or to leave out:                       

The models were excepted of all the old fashion rules during fashion          week. 

Lie vs. Lay

Lie is a verb and it means to tell a falsehood or to be untrue.  Lie is also an intransitive verb (one that does not need and object) and it means to recline or to rest in a comfortable position (implies rest, usually of a person or animal).  Lay is a transitive verb (one that takes and object) and it means to put or place something (implies motion):                       

Samantha could tell every time Richard lied to her.  For some odd reason, she chose to ignore it.  She would simply lay her clothing on the floor, hop         into bed to lie down, and cry.   

Principal vs. Principle 

Both words are nouns, of course, but they have entirely different meanings.  Principal means either a sum of money (minus the interest) invested or lent or the head of an institution, usually of a school (the principal is your pal!). A principle is a rule of conduct or a basic truth:

The cast of Sex and the City follows only one principle: “Be fabulous!” Following this principle is made easy by allowing each character to wear outrageous clothing with no principal necessary.   

Quote vs. Quotation 

Quote is always a verb and it means to copy or to repeat someone else’s words verbatim.  A quotation is a noun and it means the material being copied or quoted.  In writing papers, do not use quote for a shortened form of quotation:

My favorite quotation form Sex and the City is: “Why don’t we just give them a brown paper bag and smear dog poo all over it?”  I’ve quoted it many times while in arguments with my sister and she can’t help but laugh.    

Hanged vs. Hung 

Hanged and hung are both past participles of the verb hang.  Hanged, however, is used only to refer to executions with a rope; hung is used in all other instances to mean suspended or held up, as if on a hook or to loiter (as in he “hung around the store”):                       

If you were ever to wear an outfit like that in public, you would be hanged    by the fashion police!                       

Samantha announced that her new lover was well hung.   

Farther vs. Further 

Farther designates literal distance, while further designates degree:

She decided the pink shoes would have to do because the red ones were much farther away.  The small price tag furthered her desire for the new Jimmy Choo platforms.   

A lot A lot is always a two-phrase, and it means something like this:                       

There is a lot that people will never understand about Samantha Jones,      but that’s what keeps the viewers watching.                  

Authors Afterword

Set, Sit:

Set is a transitive verb meaning to put or to place.  Sit is an intransitive verb meaning to be seated.            

Samantha asked them all to sit because she had something important totell them.  She then told them to set down their glasses because she didn’t want them to waste any good alcohol.   

Emigrate from, Immigrate to:

Emigrate means to leave one country or region to settle in another. Immigrate means to enter another country and reside there.            

In 1900 my great-grandmother emigrated from Ireland. Many Irishmen immigrated to find work because of the potato famine in Ireland.  

Capital, Capitol:

Capital refers to a city, capitol to a building where lawmakers meet. Capital also refers to wealth or resources. 

Samantha had never been to our nation’s capital, though she claimed shehad slept with at least three men that worked at the capitol building.