Eyes on Final Fantasy Forums > Reference > Study Hall > Grammar

[Ouch!]

Not necessarily. You could end that with a question mark or an exclamation point. You might even use an interrobang. An ellipsis is insufficient for ending a sentence, and therefore punctuation is necessary to do so.

However, this does not mean that two stops is sufficient!

[Yaridovich]

Touché. ;P

One of my peeves is "Me and John are going to do it." Not only because "me" is an object pronoun, but also because "me/I" should be the final pronoun mentioned in the group.

[Kes]

Scarmiglione, I agree that "me" is wrong there, but me/I doesn't have to be the last in the list (from what I understand); it's just polite. Sometimes I do it intentionally to slight people, even if I'm the only one who is going to understand it. I'm strange/petty like that.

Secondly, I almost hate it more when people say, "She wanted to give it to him and I." I understand that whoever said it was trying, but "I" is not the all purpose answer to "person and self" situations.

And since I currently don't have The Elements of Style with me, I figure I may as well ask a question of my own: am I using quotation marks correctly in the above paragraphs?

I'm thinking that I might need to use single ones or none at all.

[Raistlin]

I don't see anything wrong with the way you used quotation marks. I prefer them over the use of single-quotes (or whatever they're called when you're not using them as an apostrophe); I only use those if I'm using a quote-within-a-quote (i.e., "She said 'let's go!'").

I don't think it's a grammatically correct option not to use quotation marks at all where you used them.

[Ouch!]

Single quotations is more of a British thing, if I remember properly. I don't see anything wrong with your use of quotations either.

[Kes]

Skimming the internets had suggested the single quote to me (it is primarily un-American), but I don't trust interwebs on grammar issues for obvious reasons.

Now that I've been reunited with my grammar books, The Elements of Style said nothing about it. However, Writing: Grammar, Usage, and Style (Cliffsnotes answer to a grammar book) and Writers Inc both support my quotes because it distinguishes a word being discussed.

So yeah, ends up Ouch! and Raistlin were right. Yay!

[Krelian]

The right thread for me. I always have some grammar questions
And here's the first one:
I've been wondering about some contractions. The book I'm using to look up things I'm uncertain about is called Practical English Usage and there's a list of contractions inside. I'm wondering about the contraction could've and should've which can't be found in the list. I'm pretty sure the latter isn't a commonly accepted contraction. Actually even my Firefox spell checker marks it as wrong. What about the former though? Is it not so common in British English, is it not common at all (though I'm sure I've heard it more than once) or is it simply missing?

Btw, my book suggests single quotation marks for words we want to give special meanings to. The author is British though

[Raistlin]

If you're ever writing something where grammar is an issue, you shouldn't be using contractions in the first place.

That said, grammatically, "could've" and "should've" are fine as far as I know. MSWord does not consider them a misspelling.