"In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practices the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly."

- Lynne Truss (from Eats, Shoots and Leaves)

this excercise of quoting somebod:y left me wondering on the conventions of quoting. Obviously, I am aware italics are not required, but when naming the source I think one uses -" for poems and short stories, and italics for novels and other big things. Or is it the other way round? Having looked at a few things with the help of google; I can bravely say that I was correct. Unless you want me to be utterly academic and give: the name of the publisher; the date of publishing; name of the editor etc.

All this reading about punctuation has completely messed up my little head!