Editing Guide to technical writing (section)

==Punctuation==

*In Derek's group we follow all the standard rules of punctuation, except that for commas we obey the Oxford rule (also called the Harvard Rule in the US). The Oxford rule resolves ambiguity and it inserts a comma before "and" in the following situation:
:: '''Normal comma rule:'''  Apples, oranges and bananas.
:: '''Oxford comma rule:''' Apples, oranges, and bananas.
*In a sentence where there are two commas, you can easily check yourself if the commas are in the right place. The trick is to read the sentence and skip the words between the commas. If the sentence still makes sense then the commas are correct.
* When inserting punctuation treat each mathematical equation as if it is a word. For example if an equation ends a sentence, the full stop must be on the end of the equation! Remember, equations obey the rules of punctuation as if they are like words. One equation, no matter how long, is like one word.
* Always put punctuation to the left of a closing inverted comma, not the right.
* Full stops, commas, colons, semi-colons, question marks, exclamation marks, all have no space on the left, but always have one space on the right. An exception is there is no space after a comma, if it is followed by an inverted comma.
* The dot at the bottom of a question mark or at the bottom of an exclamation mark serves the function of a full stop.  So these must be at the end of sentences and there is no need to add another full stop.