Writing Comments

• Visit The CMC Writing Center
• Introduction of quotations: Quotations should never suddenly appear out of nowhere. Name the author, and where appropriate, give his or her credentials.
• Superscripts and punctuation: Superscript footnote numbers follow punctuation. Use superscript Arabic numerals, not lower-case Romans.  Some idiot at Microsoft made the latter the default option, but it is easy to convert to proper format.
• Single and double quotation marks:  In American English, use single quotation marks (') only to set off quoted material (or a minor title) inside a quotation. "I think she said `I will try,' not `I won't try,'" explained Sandy.
• Author names in footnotes and endnotes:  In Turabian format, the author's first name goes first.
• Tense consistency: In summaries or narration, stick to a single tense unless you intend to indicate a change in time frame.
• Dangling modifiers: A dangling modifier is a word or phrase modifying a word that the sentence does not clearly lay out.