Grammatically Correct: The writer's essential guide to punctuation ...

GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT
Greenery I leave to the birds and the bees, they have their worries,
I have mine. At home who knows the name of what grows from the
pavement at the front of our house? It's a tree-and that's it. The kind
is of no consequence, who cares what kind, just as long as it doesn't
fall down on your head. In the autumn (or is it the spring? Do you
know this stuff? I'm pretty sure it's not the winter) there drop from
its branches long crescent-shaped pods containing hard little pellets.
Okay. Here's a scientific fact about our tree, comes by way of my
mother, Sophie Linnaeus: If you shoot those pellets through a straw,
you can take somebody's eye out and make him blind for life. (SO
NEVER DO IT! NOT EVEN IN JEST! AND IF ANYBODY DOES IT TO
YOU, YOU TELL ME INSTANTLY!) And this, more or less, is the sort of
botanical knowledge I am equipped with, until that Sunday
afternoon ....
-PHILIP RoTH, Portnoy's Complaint
Writers would be well advised to use this strategy infrequently,
however. Don't fall into the error of relying on typographical tricks
to infuse excitement or importance into less-than-inspired lines.
CONVENTIONAL USES OF CAPITAL LETTERS
Special effects aside, capitalization serves several purposes, the conventions
of which are outlined below. In cases where there is more
than one "right" approach, your main concern should be consistency.
STARTING A SENTENCE
The most common role of capital letters is, of course, to begin each
new sentence. There are just a few situations here that bear mention:
• If text that is enclosed in parentheses is part of a larger sentence,
do not capitalize it, even if it is a grammatically complete
unit. A parenthesized sentence is capitalized only if it stands alone.
Sentences begin with a capital letter (an exception is when a paren­
thesized sentence lies within the structure of another sentence).
(Be certain to capitalize any stand-alone parenthesized sentences.)
For more details, see the style conventions for "Parentheses" on
page 150.
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