The Writer's Desk Book / Being a Reference Volume upon Questions of Punctuation, Capitalization, Spelling, Division of Words, Indention, Spacing, Italics, Abbreviations, Accents, Numerals, Faulty Diction, Letter Writing, Postal Regulations, Etc.

by William Dana Orcutt

20. Adjectives ending in -ical should be divided upon the i: e.g., musi-cal, not music-al or mu-sical.

21. Word endings -tion, -sion, -tial, -cial, -tive, etc., are treated as one syllable.

22. In compound words additional hyphens should be avoided: e.g., music-lesson, not music-les-son.

Keep prefixes, roots, suffixes, etc., as distinct as possible.

NOTE. Division of words in French, Italian, German, and Spanish, may be found in De Vinne’s “Correct Composition,” pp. 434–446.

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INDENTION AND PARAGRAPHING

IN prose manuscript, each paragraph should be written with regular indention.

2. When paragraphs are numbered, the figure should be written where the capital letter of the first word would otherwise be placed.

3. In poetry, lines which overrun should be written with reverse indention.