Pointing

PUNCTILIOUS -- Punctuation and punctual come from the same root as point and pointing. We speak of arriving "on the dot." In Spanish, the phrase for arriving on time is "en punto." Punctuation refers to putting points (dots and other marks) into a sentence to clarify meaning. Leaving out necessary points makes for foggy reading. E! News left out an apostrophe in a caption phrase "It's the bees knees," making it unclear whether the knees belong to one bee or several.

INSIDE OR OUTSIDE -- Periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks for the sole reason that it looks better. Other marks can be inside or outside, depending on whether the punctuator is part of the quoted material. Example A: "How much is that?" he asked.  Example B: Did he say "no trespassing"? Note also no double punctuation in Example A. Don't use both comma and question mark inside the closing quote.

HYPHEN HAVEN -- For those unsure on the use of the hyphen, consider this: The New York Times used "royal-watchers" to refer to those who watch the royals. This differentiates this crowd from "royal watchers," who would be royal persons watching someone or something else.

WHO ELSE? -- NBC News reported that Lisa Murkowski was "only the second person since 1954 to win election by write-in vote." Pug Mahoney spent the rest of the evening wondering who the other was. For the record, the other write-in winner was Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

ONE WORD OR TWO -- The English language has the wonderful capacity to use a word as a noun, verb or adjective without changing its form. But when a verb phrase becomes a noun, a two-word phrase will often become a single word. For example, the verb phrase "roll over" becomes the noun "rollover," "crack down" becomes "crackdown," and "turn around" becomes "turnaround." Some writers, however, use the closed-up noun form when they should retain the two-word verb phrase. Careful writers maintain the difference.

GLEANINGS of an Itinerant Speller -- It's "Manhattan," with the letter a throughout. No e, if you please. The word counterinsurgency would be more readable with a hyphen. Make it counter-insurgency.