Bryson•s Dictionary for Writers and Editors

Appendix � 381
the punctuation to fall outside except when it is part of the quotation.
Thus the example above would be “He said, ‘I will not go’.”
When quotation marks are used to set off a complete statement,
the first word of the quotation should be capitalized (“He said, ‘Victory
is ours’ ”) except when the quotation is preceded by that (“He
said that ‘victory is ours’ ”). Fowler believed that no punctuation
was necessary to set off attributive quotations; he would, for instance,
delete the commas from the following: “ ‘Tomorrow,’ he
said, ‘is a new day.’ ” His argument was that commas are not needed
to mark the interruption or introduction of a quotation because the
quotation marks already do that. Logically he is correct. But with
equal logic we could argue that question marks should be dispensed
with on the grounds that the context almost always makes it clear
that a question is being asked. The commas are required not by
logic but by convention.
semicolon. The semicolon is heavier than the comma but lighter
than the period. Its principal function is to divide contact clauses—
that is, two ideas that are linked by sense but that lack a conjunction.
For instance, “You take the high road; I’ll take the low road.”
Equally that could be made into two complete sentences or, by introducing
a conjunction, into one (“You take the high road and I’ll
take the low road”). The semicolon is also sometimes used to separate
long coordinate clauses. In this role it was formerly used much
more extensively than it is today.