Punctuation

Q. For catalog copy, how would I write inches symbols with a period at the end of a sentence? (The client wants symbols rather than to spell out inches. That is nondebatable.)

5'' × 4''.
or
5'' × 4.''

The client says it’s the latter. I say NO WAY. I think the hash marks are not to be confused with an end-quote mark. Please!!! Please!!! Can someone help me out here?

Q. I am unclear on whether you always use brackets for ellipses that the author quoting the material has inserted. For example, in this quote, the quoting author has inserted ellipses. Would every instance of ellipses therefore be bracketed? “Make manifest the nature of the Moral-Mental-Physical Conflict; . . . discern a Pattern for Successful Operations; . . . help generalize Tactics and Strategy; . . . find a basis for Grand Strategy.”

Q. I’m a copyeditor, and I’m currently working on a company newsletter that highlights a new section of our internal style guide. I’m quoting two sentences of some existing material for an example, but I don’t want to include the entire second sentence. Right now, I have this: “For example: ‘Our new software makes managing information effortless. The software allows users to . . .’ ” Should there be a period at the end of that quote? Inside the quotation marks or outside? I’ve been staring at it for far too long and have come to no conclusion.

Q. I’m proofreading a math textbook that ends a sentence with “25 in.” followed by a superscript 2, denoting square inches. (Our math textbooks do not use “sq. in.”) There is a period after “in” and then another period after the superscript: 25 in.2. My gut says to eliminate the second period. What say you?

Q. I’m editing a transcript, and our department’s lead editor is giving me some trouble. We’re suffering over the word so. Under what circumstances can one put a comma after so? For example, in this transcript, a woman says: “So great answer.” Is so functioning conjunctively here, or can it be treated as an interjection? And what, if anything, does that mean for comma placement?

Q. The most common paragraph in a scientific paper’s introduction is the last one: “The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 1 will . . . ; section 2 will . . . ,” etc. Is it correct not to use a colon after follows, but rather a period? Using a period would allow us to change this long sentence into four or five sentences to cover all the remaining sections.

Q. My writer frequently writes a sentence with several points, each of which is denoted by a number inside parentheses. Sometimes these points are preceded by a comma or semicolon, and sometimes there is no punctuation to distinguish between each part other than the aforementioned (#)s. Which way is correct? Should these points be preceded by some punctuation, and if so, what kind?

Q. I can’t find anywhere in CMOS the correct procedure for punctuation at the end of rhetorical questions. A question mark seems out of place and an exclamation point, which CMOS does mention, seems gratuitous. Here are two such rhetorical questions from my forthcoming book:

The question for any owner or manager was, however, how much revenue are those live commercials bringing into the station.

The bigger question would be, could Crist and Johnson hold on to the station.

Will a period suffice for those?

Q. Searching for a guideline for “is known as” turns up two possible punctuation choices for the term/terms that follow. Sometimes the term is enclosed within double quotes; sometimes it lacks any punctuation. How does one decide?

Q. After reading your rule about not putting two periods one after the other, I wonder about a parenthesis as serving to break up this rule. How would you punctuate the following?

Option 1: Contact all departments (Finance, Compliance, Information Management, etc.)
Option 2: Contact all departments (Finance, Compliance, Information Management, etc.).

Or is there a third option?