English: Composition and Literature

by W. F. Webster

“And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!—

Pray you, undo this button:—thank you, sir.—

Do you see this? Look on her,—look,—her lips,—

Look there, look there!”—

“For the first time he determined to try the coal-hole—a small closet near the hearth.”

PERIOD, EXCLAMATION POINT, INTERROGATION MARK.

1. A period closes every declarative sentence.
2. A period is used after abbreviations.
3. An exclamation point follows an expression of strong emotion.
4. An interrogation mark follows a direct question.
5. An interrogation mark is sometimes used in the body of a sentence, when the writer wishes to make the assertion forceful and uses a rhetorical question for the purpose.
6. “The shepherd’s dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?—and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden.”
7. Quotation marks inclose every quotation of the exact words of another. When one quotation is made within another, the inner or secondary quotation is inclosed with single marks, the main or outer quotation is included within the double marks.

“The shepherd’s dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?—and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden.”

(Examples of both may be found above.)

SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING PUNCTUATION.

At the time the pupils are studying the rules for punctuation they are reading Hawthorne or some other author equally careful of his punctuation. In his writing they will find numerous examples of the rules for punctuation. Let them take five rules for the comma, finding all the examples in five pages of text. In the same way furnish semicolons, colons, and dashes. When the rules have all been learned, they should be able to give the reason for every mark they find in literature. Next place upon the board paragraphs not punctuated, and have the pupils punctuate them. Remember that there is not absolute uniformity in the use of [309] the comma, semicolon, and colon; though in each author there is a general adherence to the principles he adopts. Punctuation should be consistent. Insist that the pupil punctuate his written work consistently.

E. SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF LITERATURE.[57]

Hawthorne	A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys.
Tennyson	Enoch Arden.
Longfellow	Tales of a Wayside Inn.
Whittier	The Tent on the Beach.
Macaulay	Lays of Ancient Rome.
Dickens	A Christmas Carol.
Kipling	Wee Willie Winkie, and Other Stories.
Kipling	The Jungle Books.
Hawthorne	Twice-Told Tales.
Hawthorne	Mosses from an Old Manse.
Dickens	The Cricket on the Hearth.
Brown	Rab and his Friends.
Ouida	A Dog of Flanders.
Hale	The Man without a Country.
Defoe	Robinson Crusoe.
Poe	The Gold-Bug.
Scott	Marmion.
Scott	The Lady of the Lake.
Browning	Hervé Riel, an Incident of the French Camp, and other Narrative Poems.
Franklin	Autobiography.
Cooper	The Last of the Mohicans.
Longfellow	Evangeline.
Longfellow	Miles Standish.
Davis	Gallegher, and Other Stories.
Maupassant	Number Thirteen.
Miss Wilkins	Short Stories.
Miss Jewett	Short Stories.
Pope	The Iliad.
Aldrich	Marjorie Daw.
Lowell	The Vision of Sir Launfal, and Other Poems.
[310] Irving	Tales of a Traveller.
Irving	The Sketch Book.
Poe	The Fall of the House of Usher.
Whittier	Snow-Bound.
Burroughs	Sharp Eyes; Birds and Bees; Pepacton.
Goldsmith	The Deserted Village.
Scott	Ivanhoe.
Dickens	David Copperfield.
Shakespeare	Julius Cæsar.
Shakespeare	The Merchant of Venice.
Irving	Rip Van Winkle.
Irving	The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Bryant	Selected Poems.
Gray	An Elegy in a Country Churchyard.
Tennyson	The Princess; Idylls of the King.
Dickens	The Pickwick Papers.
Burns	Selected Poems.
Dryden	Alexander’s Feast.
Byron	Childe Harold.
George Eliot	Silas Marner.
Coleridge	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Macaulay	Essay on Milton.
Ruskin	Sesame and Lilies.
Emerson	Friendship; Self-Reliance; Fortune of the Republic; The American Scholar.
Arnold	On the Study of Poetry; Wordsworth and Keats.
Lowell	Emerson, the Lecturer; Milton; Books and Libraries.
Holmes	The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.
Addison	The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers.
Wordsworth	Intimations of Immortality, and Other Poems.
Keats	Selected Poems.
Shelley	Selected Poems.
Shakespeare	Macbeth.
Shakespeare	A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Shakespeare	As You Like It.
Webster	Bunker Hill Monument Oration; Adams and Jefferson.
[311] Goldsmith	The Vicar of Wakefield.
Milton	L’Allegro; Il Penseroso; Comus; Lycidas.
De Quincey	Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Other Papers.
John Henry Newman	Selected Essays.
Thackeray	Henry Esmond.
Stevenson	Virginibus Puerisque.
Stevenson	Memories and Portraits.
Schurz	Abraham Lincoln.
George William Curtis	Selected Addresses.
Charles Lamb	Essays of Elia.
Stevenson	Travels with a Donkey.
Stevenson	An Inland Voyage.
Burke	Conciliation with the Colonies.
Lincoln	Cooper Union Address; Gettysburg Speech.
Chaucer	Prologue, and Two Canterbury Tales.
Milton	Paradise Lost, and Sonnets.
Carlyle	Essay on Burns.
Tennyson	In Memoriam, and Lyrics.
Browning	Rabbi Ben Ezra; Saul; A Grammarian’s Funeral.
Thoreau	Walden.
Austen	Pride and Prejudice.
George Eliot	Romola.
Shakespeare	King Lear.
Shakespeare	Hamlet.
Macaulay	Essay on Johnson.
Thackeray	Vanity Fair.
Lowell	Democracy; Lincoln.
Stevenson	Lantern Bearers; A Humble Remonstrance; Gossip about Romance.