O and OH
The Century Dictionary says there is no difference between O and oh except that of their present spelling. The New Standard and Webster’s New International do not go so far, but they point out the difference observed by most good writers.
O is generally used only in direct address; and, as the name of the person or thing addressed immediately follows it, it takes no mark of punctuation after it. An exclamation-point may follow the group of words introduced by O. Its vocative character is not lost when the person or thing addressed is not named, for it may be understood.
O is used more in poetry than in prose.
O is used in an ejaculatory expression when followed by for or that. It does not here seem to lose its vocative character, although the name of the thing or person addressed may not readily be supplied.
O is sometimes used colloquially in expressions like “O my!” “O dear!” etc.
Oh is purely ejaculatory, and takes a comma or an exclamation-point immediately after it; but the latter mark may follow the group of words beginning with oh, with a comma before oh.
O is always written with a capital, but oh takes a capital only when beginning a sentence. Some writers prefer always to write oh with a capital.
EXAMPLES
1. Yesterday was my last bad day, but I remember the preceding bad days.
2. He played a prominent part in Congress during the last, bad days of the period of Reconstruction.
3. Cultivation is a fitting object to be attained by education, particularly in a country, like ours, of busy, practical people.
4. For this stream of apt illustrations Macaulay was indebted to his extraordinary memory, and his rapid eye for contrasts and analogies.
5. The so-called revolutions of Holland, England, and America, are all links of one chain.
6. A man who is sensitive, quick in his responses, loyal to his convictions, and strong in his feelings, is capable of a kind of public service that the phlegmatic, unresponsive, insensitive sort of man cannot render.
7. Much of this work was written, and some of it was printed, years ago.
8. We call a thing a blessing because it happens to fit our desires, or, at least, our ideas of what a blessing ought to be.
9. Many suns may set, and many dark nights may cover the earth with clouds, before the truth is ripened into fruitage.
10. These, and a hundred others which will occur to everyone, are marked instances of adaptation to environment.
11. His first problem is the growth of great fortunes, and the collocation of wealth and poverty in large cities.
12. They laud the commission’s report, and exult in its conclusions as the final vindication of their own motives and methods.
13. We have learned, or ought to have learned by this time, that the use of a mark of punctuation often depends wholly upon the sense of the language, and not upon grammatical construction.
14. Untrammeled physical motions may here perfectly express the feelings that elsewhere have to stay unexpressed, or be, at best, imperfectly expressed by a trammeled tongue.
15. A tiny owl with a queer little voice called continually, not only after nightfall, but in the bright afternoon.
16. His speech was noteworthy, not for its eloquence, but because of the effect it produced upon the public.
17. The secret of life is, not to do what one likes, but to try to like that which one has to do; and one does come to like it in time.
18. Mortality; the insane, feeble-minded, deaf and dumb, and blind; crime, pauperism, and benevolence; education; churches; foreign-born population; and manufacturers, are the subjects of his report.
19. Elijah is not the only one who has heard in the wilderness a still, small voice.
20. A holy war—oh, the irony of the appellation!—means the legitimatizing of slaughter, rapine, and plunder.
CHAPTER X
CONVENTIONAL USES OF MARKS
Many uses of marks seem to be based solely upon convention, or arbitrary custom. Back of this convention there may be, in many cases, reason for the punctuation; but, more frequently, there seems to be no reason.
It is not always worth while carefully to attempt to distinguish between reason and convention; but it is quite important to know what is the best, or, at least, what is good, conventional usage, and to follow it in one’s writing. We think it reasonable to call good only such conventional punctuation as is found in the work of writers, and of expert editors of copy, who use marks with a fair degree of consistency, and do not often violate the fundamental principles of punctuation already discussed herein. The punctuation found in most weekly and monthly periodicals is very poor, and is often inferior to that of daily newspapers. In a very few magazines (it would be difficult to name a half dozen, either American or European), and in a considerable number of daily newspapers, the use of marks is discriminating and helpful; in most of our periodical literature the use of marks is so distractive as to make the presence of any mark other than the end-marks of doubtful value, at least to readers not familiar with the meanings of most of the marks of punctuation.