Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/287

Rh implication; but it may be better to give it again explicitly. We first refer to examples 1, 2, 3, 6, 13, 14, 24, in all of which the stop, if one is to be used, though our view is that in most of these sentences it should not, is in the right place; and to example 16, in which it is in the wrong place. We next add two new examples of wrong order, with corrections as usual; the rules for stops with brackets are the same as with double dashes.

A protest must next be made against the compositor's superstition embodied in Beadnell's words: As the dash in this case supplies the place of the parenthesis, strictly speaking, the grammatical point should follow the last dash; but as this would have an unsightly appearance, it is always placed before it. This unsightliness is either imaginary or at most purely conventional, and should be entirely disregarded. The rules will be (1) For the single dash: Since the dash is on any view either a correction of or an addition to the stop that would have been used if dashes had not existed, the dash will always stand after the stop. (2) For the double dash or brackets: There will be one stop or none according to the requirements of the principal sentence only; there will never be two stops (apart, of course, from internal ones); if there is one, it will stand before the first or after the last dash or bracket according as the parenthesis belongs to the following or the preceding part of the principal sentence. It may be added that it is extremely rare for the parenthesis to belong to the last part, and therefore for the stop to be rightly placed before it. In Rh