Are we more careful with one another's words than we used to be? Could we - by which I mean those of us in the world of print publishing and its Web components - afford to lose some of the quotation marks we employ so freely and just take responsibility for using the words in our own editorial voice, without seeking to pin them on to others?

I was reminded of this longtime cluster of questions the other day when I was called in to consult on a piece that seemed a tad overpunctuated. It involved a stylized representation of the author's interior monologue, including references to a number of television shows. Their titles, which included a self-punctuating one, with its own question mark, each needed its own set of quotation marks.

The author had put the whole thing in quotes, and so the result was a cluttered sentence around which punctuation marks swarmed like insects around a streetlamp on a summer evening. My suggested fix was to take out a layer of punctuation – to lose the quotes around the whole interior monologue bit and let the question mark in one of the titles end the sentence.

Whew. Sometimes less really is more. The excised quotation marks can go back into their box and be called on later, when there's a need for them. There surely will be eventually.

These little marks that the British call "inverted commas" are the acrobats of the punctuation world, levitating from the bottom of the line of type to the top. They work singly; they work in pairs.

I sense that they're working harder nowadays for several reasons. In an age of more on-the-record official briefings, with cameras present, writers of all sorts have more opportunities for getting someone's exact words and fewer excuses for not having them. It's often easier for a reporter on deadline (is there any other kind?) to copy and paste a block of type from a press release posted online into a story rather than trying to make sense of handwritten notes on paper and try to fashion a coherent sentence that honestly represents the person's thoughts without making him or her sound like a doofus.

Sometimes even friends sharing bits of e-mail take this kind of cut-and-paste approach. Instead of paraphrasing someone's complicated directions to the cottage by the lake, for instance, why not just copy and paste? "Here's what Fred said about the route to take" is all the introduction that's needed.

A lot of conversation that used to be oral is written nowadays – instant messaging, texting, and of course e-mail. But even in live conversation, we have ways of signaling that we're using someone else's exact words, or nearly exact. It's not just the "quote, unquote" idiom; even those adolescent-sounding constructions with "like" represent a form of direct quotation: "I got in at three, and Dad was like, 'Where have you been?'"

And while we're in this neighborhood, let's not forget the convention of "air quotes" or "finger quotes."

In earlier centuries this function of "I am telling you exactly what the guy said" was handled by the now-quaint verb "quoth."

At the other end of the spectrum from the copy-and-paste block quote is the snippet quote. This is widely familiar, especially its subspecies, the strategic snippet. I know I'm not the only one to look at book jacket blurbs or movie ads to speculate on the original context of the hot words.

The ad calls the movie "amazing," for instance, and one suspects that the full quote would have been along the lines of, "Given how weak the story line is and how unappealing the main characters, that this movie ever made it to release is nothing short of amazing."

Snippet quotes, in an altogether more honorable version, are a hallmark of Zagat's restaurant reviews. Perhaps they use "so many" "little snippets" because they want to "remind" the "reader" that the "ratings" are based on the input of "lots and lots" of customers, and that broad base of inputs is one of the system's strengths. But it all gets a little bit cute, you know?

Not all snippet quotes are created equal. Quote marks are useful in highlighting readers' judgments and opinions. They're less so indicating phrases expressing simple facts. I'm not picking on Zagat. I'm trying to get at that point of taking responsibility for one's words as a writer or editor.

Take for example, a Zagat review of a restaurant where I have dined, and happily so. It praises the restaurant's "'adventurous,' 'seasonal' New American menu." Hmm. "Adventurous" is clearly a value judgment, and culinary adventure starts in different places for different people. My mother thought I was being adventurous to add oregano to her Shrimp Creole.

But "seasonal" is, or ought to be, a matter of fact. Either the chef goes from serious, fortifying brown things in winter to lighthearted, energizing green things in spring (I'm thinking of last night's pea soup here; forgive me) or she doesn't.

And you can quote me on that.

I thought – briefly – that maybe I'd gone a bit far the other week in championing the role of the unsung semicolon.

But then I saw a Reuters news photo, snapped just after the Madrid bombings March 11, showing a public-service ad posted in London's Victoria Underground station. The poster was intended to encourage travelers to keep an eye out for unattended bags and parcels that might conceal a bomb – not a new concern, alas, in Britain, which over the years has had much sad experience with IRA explosions.

But actually, what struck me most about the ad was something that wasn't there – a semicolon. Seriously. The semicolon has a part to play in Britain's national security, and the Metropolitan Police – or somebody – is not cooperating!

The white-on-black text of the ad is punchy and direct: "Who owns this bag? If you suspect it, report it." Note the rat-tat-tat-tat of the first four Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, followed by the nice balance of the two Latin-derived disyllables.

Then the text continues in the middle of the image in a black bubble, like a very somber cousin to the "thought bubbles" that float over the heads of comic-strip characters. "Don't touch, check with other passengers, inform station staff or call 999."

Officer, I want to report a comma splice on the Victoria Line: The ad needs a semicolon, or maybe even a period (a "full stop") after "Don't touch." Otherwise the "don't" applies to all the other verbs: checking, informing, or calling (999 being the British equivalent of 911 in the United States).

Don't be silly, some may counter; everybody knows what's meant. Besides, Londoners unclear on the concept could have seen Defense Minister Geoff Hoon on the other "tube" – BBC Television – to talk up public vigilance.

But does a message that makes sense only if you already know what it's supposed to mean count as communication? The Underground daily serves thousands of foreign visitors and immigrants whose grasp of English can be as tentative as a straphanger's footing during the morning rush. If I were charged with keeping the Tube safe, I would be especially loath to discourage any passenger from approaching any other passenger about a suspect bag.

I'm not the only one to raise this point. The Economist noted that the Tube ad "seemed oddly keen to encourage natural British reticence rather than vigilance," though conceding that it might have been "planted by punctuation zealots" to make a point.

Sept. 11, 2001, made us all New Yorkers. Since March 11, todos somos madrileños. I don't want us all to have to become Londoners. (By Ruth Walker)

Are you a recreational grammarian?

You mean you’ve never heard of such a thing? Well, I hadn’t either until I started researching the semicolon in the news last week. (More on that in a bit.) For a year and a half I’ve been writing a weekly memo on grammar and style that circulates among the Monitor staff and beyond – I’m sometimes surprised how far beyond. From the feedback I get, I’ve come to suspect that grammar and language issues are if not exactly hot, at least a lot hotter than I would have thought.

This blog is an effort to provide another resource for the recreational grammarians – that sounds more athletic than "words nerds," doesn’t it? – among us. (For the term “recreational grammarians,” I’m indebted to The Grammar Lady.)

As a voting bloc, recreational grammarians are probably flying under the radar of most of the current political campaigns. They surely aren’t as numerous as NASCAR dads or soccer moms, and probably aren’t as easy to find, either. Where would politicians seek them out – at the reference shelf in the public library, where they’d be shushed if they spoke in the usual booming tones of vote-seeking politicians?

But that’s enough introduction. Let’s get to the Semicolon That Made Headlines.

Last week San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren, reviewing a petition by the Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund to have the court block the issuance of “gender neutral” marriage licenses, complained that the petition was badly drawn up; it used a semicolon where the word "or" was needed instead. He refused to issue the requested order. "I am not trying to be petty here, but it is a big deal… That semicolon is a big deal."

I haven’t been so impressed with the power of punctuation since my (then newly graduated) seventh-grade English teacher warned our class that if we ever sent a comma to do a semicolon’s job, we’d be committing a "comma splice." "At UCLA, that’s an automatic 'F' on your whole paper," she told us. She didn’t have to say it twice.

A semicolon serves to join independent clauses, each with subject and verb: "John is driving to the party; I’m taking the bus." It helps make for prose that flows, rather than stopping and starting like traffic at badly synchronized signals. The British don’t call the period a "full stop" for nothing. In the example above, the semicolon expresses simultaneity of facts (two modes of transport) while remaining mute on the interpersonal relationships (Why isn’t "John" giving "me" a ride?)

Conveying neither the pile-on affirmation of "and" ("Her parents are crazy about her new boyfriend, and so are all her friends) nor the contrast of "but," ("He thinks he can find a house in that neighborhood for less than $300,000, but I know that’s impossible"), the semicolon conveys just the facts, ma’am, and invites readers to draw their own inference.

A good fit in situations that are open-ended, multidirectional, even a little ambiguous, the semicolon is a very modern punctuation mark. Let's see more of it. (by Ruth Walker)