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

GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT
a matter that surely an aunt may be allowed to decide for herself. You
seem to think that every aunt should be exactly like your aunt! This
is absurd. For Heaven's sake give me back my cigarette case. (Follows
Algernon round the room.)
-OscAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest
WORDS AND LETTERS REFERRED TO AS SUCH
Either italics or quotation marks may be used to set off words or
letters that are being presented as words or letters.
Her i's were dotted and her t's were crossed.
The Tangierines-approximately 800 residents-say that their
island was first settled in 1686 by a certain john Crockett, a Cornish­
man. There are no records of this, but the evidence of the Tangier
Island speech is overwhelming. To English ears, they sound West Coun­
try. Most striking of all "sink" is pronounced zink. Mary and merry
have a similar pronunciation, though this is common to much of the
tidewater district. "Paul" and "ball" sound like pull and bull. For" creek"
they will say erik. And they have a special local vocabulary: spider for
"frying-pan", bateau for "skiff" and curtains for "blinds".
-RoBERT McCRuM, WILLIAM CRAN AND RoBERT MAcNEIL,
UNDERSCORING A POINT IN A QUOTE
The Story of English
If you are presenting quoted material, you may wish to highlight a
particular word, phrase or passage, either because you feel it holds
some critical significance or because it makes some controversial
point from which you want to dissociate yourself. The way to do
this is to italicize the relevant text and then, in order to clearly
attribute the italics to yourself and not to the original author, follow
it with the words italics mine, italics added or emphasis added,
in square brackets.
284
"Of this woman's life on the plantation I subsequently learned the
following circumstances. She was the wife of head man Frank ...
second in command to the overseer. His wife [Betty]-a tidy, trim