I ask you, "Shall I go?"
I asked whether I should go.
98. The Exclamation Point.—The exclamation point is used after exclamatory words, phrases, and sentences. When an exclamatory sentence begins with an interjection, it is usually sufficient to place a comma after the interjection and to reserve the exclamation point until the end of the sentence. When an unemphatic interjection begins a declarative sentence, it is frequently possible to omit the exclamation point entirely. As a rule O is used only in direct address.
Help! You rascal! Be off with you!
Ah, you are back again!
Oh, what a mess I have made of it!
Oh, I didn't see you.
Hear me, O King! Oh! I am wounded!
99. The Semicolon.—Semicolons have two uses:—
1. To separate the principal clauses in a compound sentence.
To our left we beheld the towers of the Alhambra beetling above us; to our right we were dominated by equal towers on a rocky eminence.
Some suppose them to have been built by the Romans; others, by the Phœnicians.
He received only ten guineas for this stately, vigorous poem; but the sale was rapid and the success complete.
There was now a sound behind me like a rushing blast; I heard the clatter of a thousand hoofs; and countless throngs overtook me.