The sign of Admiration or Exclamation [!] denotes surprise, astonishment, rapture, and other sudden emotions of the mind, whether of joy or sorrow. This sign is put after the interjections Ah! Alas! Oh! &c.; but there are exceptional cases, as, Ah me! Alas the day! &c.
All the points, except the comma and the period, should be preceded by a hair-space; the comma and full-point do not require any space to bear them off.
The em dash [—], though not ranked as a point, is often used by careless writers as a substitute for a comma or semicolon. It may be properly employed in parenthetical sentences, and in rhapsodical writing abounding in disconnected sentences.
A dash stands for a sign of repetition in catalogues of goods, where it implies ditto; and in catalogues of books, where a dash signifies ejusdem, instead of repeating the author’s name with the title of every separate treatise of his writing. A sign of repetition should never appear at the top of a page, but the name of the author, or of the merchandise, should be set out again at length.
A dash likewise stands for to; as, chap. xvi. 3-17; that is, from the third to the seventeenth verse inclusive. At other times it serves for an index, to give notice that what follows it is a corollary of what has preceded; thus:—
APOSTROPHE.
The apostrophe [’] is a comma cast on the upper edge of a type, and is used as a sign of contraction or abbreviation of words in poetry or familiar conversation, as We’re, o’er, don’t, &c. In poetry, it should not be employed where the verb ends with e, as love, change, &c., but only in cases where the verb concludes with a consonant, as, reign, obtain, &c. It also marks the elision of a vowel at the beginning of words, as, ’scape, or of a syllable, as, ’prentice.
The monosyllables though and through are sometimes shortened to tho’ and thro’, but very improperly, as they retain the same sound, and the abbreviation cannot in the slightest degree assist the versification.
Words in the possessive case are generally known by having ’s for their termination.
All quotations which are denoted at the beginning by inverted commas are closed with apostrophes. There is no space required between the apostrophe and the matter.