Writerly Wednesday: Being punctual

Thanks to everyone who left encouraging messages yesterday. They were like a bright light in a dark room. I appreciate it.

In keeping with Elana's advice -- focusing on the stuff in life that doesn't suck -- I'm turning my focus back to writing. More specifically, grammar and punctuation.
(Wait a minute. That's the sucky part about writing. Isn't it? Oh well.)

I've been writing for a newspaper for more than a decade, and I still wouldn't claim to be an expert when it comes to the English language or punctuation.
This is, after all, an incredibly complicated language, but as writers, we need to know the proper way to cross our Is, dot our Ts and mind our Qs and Ps. (Did you catch that? Hope you giggled a little.)

When I first started blogging, I posted some tips for writers that included some points on this. They included:

1. Exclamation! Points! Are! Rarely! Ever! Necessary!
Let your writing portray the emotion.

2. Use a comma when you have an dependent clause followed by an independent clause.

3. While I'm playing comma nazi, I will also add a reminder to use commas before a conjunction (and, or, but, for, yet, nor, so) in compound sentences.

4. Avoid ending your sentence with prepositions. (A preposition is anywhere a rat can go --above, beyond, below, between -- plus the word of.)
Funny story. My coworkers once gave me a birthday card with a picture of one high schooler asking, "So, where's your birthday party at?" The other friend responds by telling her not to end a sentence with a preposition. Inside the card, the question had been rephrased as: "Where's your birthday party at b***h?"
This isn't the best example of how not to end a sentence with a preposition, but it definitely makes a point.

5. If you can replace the word "who" with the words him or her, you should use the word "whom."

Since posting those tips, however, I've unearthed some other stumbling blocks that always seem to trip up writers (ahem, me).

For instance, the words "towards" and "backwards." Guess what? While it isn't wrong to put an "s" at the end of those words, it isn't necessary. If you're doing it, you're making more work for yourself. (Actually, the difference is in dialect. Toward is American English; Towards in British.)

Hyphenated modifiers. Permanent compound phrases -- like high school dropout, health care reform, day care provider (you know, common phrases) -- don't need a hyphen. Temporary compound phrases -- like half-baked idea or ill-timed remark -- need a hyphen UNLESS the modifier is used after the noun. (e.g. His idea was half baked.) Also, when using an adverb (think -ly) as a modifier, you do not need a hyphen.

Punctuation with quotation marks. This particular one drives me nuts because in all of the press releases I receive, I rarely see correct usage. And that is as a general rule writers should place commas and periods inside the quotation almost all of the time, making exceptions only for parenthetical citation and cases in which the addition of a period or comma would create confusion, such as when quoting a keyboard entry or a web address. However, there are exceptions. Grammarbook.com does a great job explaining those exceptions.

Irregular verbs. Yes. I'm talking about "to lay." Guess what? I have a grammarbook link to that, too. (And it's awesome.)

OK. That's enough for one day. Maybe one of these days I'll get into split infinitives, other danglers and why "said" is a good word.

But not today.

Do you have any writerly stumbling blocks or pet peeves? Were you taught differently on any of the tips offered here?