A Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors.pdf

NASA SP-7084

Grammar, Punctuation, and

Capitalization

A Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors

Mary K. McCaskill

Langley Research Center

Hampton, Virginia

Preface

Page iii

Preface

The four chapters making up this reference publication were originally written as part of an ongoing effort to

write a style manual for the Technical Editing Branch of the NASA Langley Research Center. These chapters

were written for technical publishing professionals (primarily technical editors) at Langley. At the urging of my

branch head, I am making this part of the style manual available to the technical publishing community.

This publication is directed toward professional writers, editors, and proofreaders. Those whose profession lies

in other areas (for example, research or management), but who have occasion to write or review others' writing

will also find this information useful. By carefully studying the examples and revisions to these examples, you

can discern most of the techniques in my editing "bag of tricks"; I hope that you editors will find these of

particular interest.

Being a technical editor, I drew nearly all the examples from the documents written by Langley's research staff. I

admit that these examples are highly technical and therefore harder to understand, but technical editors and other

technical publishing professionals must understand grammar, punctuation, and capitalization in the context in

which they work.

In writing these chapters, I came to a realization that has slowly been dawning on me during my 15 years as a

technical editor: authorities differ on many rules of grammar, punctuation, and capitalization; these rules are

constantly changing (as is our whole language); and these rules (when they can be definitely ascertained)

sometimes should be broken! Thus much of writing and editing is a matter of style, or preference. Some of the

information in this publication, particularly the chapter on capitalization, is a matter of style. Langley's editorial

preferences are being presented when you see the words we prefer, "we" being Langley's editorial staff. I do not

intend to imply that Langley's style is preferred over any other; however, if you do not have a preferred style,

Langley's editorial tradition is a long and respected one.

I wish to acknowledge that editorial tradition and the people who established it and trained me in it. I am also

grateful to Alberta L. Cox, NASA Ames Research Center, and to Mary Fran Buehler, Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

for reviewing this document.

Contents

Page iv

Contents

Preface

iii

1. Grammar

1.1. Grammar and Effective Writing

1.2. Nouns

1.2.1. Possessive Case

1.2.2. Possessive of Inanimate Objects

1.3. Pronouns

1.3.1. Antecedents

1.3.2. Personal Pronouns

1.3.3. Relative Pronouns

1.3.4. Demonstrative Pronouns

1.4. Verbs

1.4.1. Tense

1.4.2. Mood

1.4.3. Voice

1.4.4. Verb Number

1.5. Adjectives

1.5.1. Articles

1.5.2. Unit Modifiers

1.6. Adverbs

1.6.1. Misplaced Adverbs

1.6.2. Squinting Adverbs

1.6.3. Split Infinitives

Contents

Page v

1.7. Prepositions

1.7.1. Prepositional Idioms

1.7.2. Terminal Prepositions

1.7.3. Repeating Prepositions

1.8. Conjunctions

1.8.1. Coordinating Conjunctions

1.8.2. Subordinating Conjunction

1.9. Verbals

1.9.1. Coordinate Gerunds and Infinitives

1.9.2. Idiom Requiring Gerund or Infinitive

1.9.3. Dangling Verbals

2. Sentence Structure

2.1. Sentence Structure and Effective Writing

2.2. Subjects and Verbs

2.2.1. Clarify Subject

2.2.2. Make Verbs Vigorous

2.2.3. Improve Subject-Verb Relationship

2.3. Parallelism

2.3.1. Connectives Requiring Parallelism

2.3.2. Itemization

2.4. Brevity and Conciseness

2.4.1. Wordiness

2.4.2. Shortening Text

Contents

Page vi

2.4.3. Shortening Titles

2.5. Comparisons

2.5.1. Comparison of Adjectives and Adverbs

2.5.2. Ambiguous Comparisons

2.5.3. Comparison Constructions

2.6. Emphasis

2.6.1. Emphasizing With Sentence Structure

2.6.2. Emphasizing With Punctuation

3. Punctuation

3.1. A Functional Concept of Punctuation

3.2. Apostrophe

3.3. Brackets

3.4. Colon

3.4.1. Colons That Introduce

3.4.2. Conventional Uses of the Colon

3.4.3. Use With Other Marks

3.5. Comma

3.5.1. Commas That Separate

3.5.2. Commas That Enclose

3.5.3. Conventional Uses of the Comma

3.5.4. Use With Other Marks

3.6. Em Dash

3.6.1. Dashes That Enclose

3.6.2. Dashes That Separate

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