English Grammar Demystified - A Self Teaching Guide

CHAPTER 5 More About Punctuation^123

un-til

re-fer-ral

com-pre-hen-sive

Break between double consonants in words ending in -ing. Otherwise, hyphenate at
the suffi x:

run-ning

sun-ning

driv-ing

fall-ing

At the end of a line, divide already-hyphenated words at the hyphen:

self-induced

mass-produced

Parentheses and Brackets

Use parentheses for words not strictly necessary to the main thought of the sen-
tence. The rule of thumb is this: When you read the sentence, you should be able to
skip the words in parentheses and still have the sentence make sense. If it doesn’t,
the parentheses are used incorrectly.

Use heavy-weight (bright white) printing paper

In this sentence, the meaning and intention are clear without the additional informa-
tion in the parentheses.
Do not use a capital letter or fi nal punctuation (except the question mark) within
parentheses. For example:

I left for Arizona on a Friday (or was it Saturday?) last year.

I completed (somehow or other) fi ve forms in 20 minutes.