Is the punctuation correct in these sentences?

I just finished an essay for my blog and I'm not sure if the punctuation is correct for the following quotes. Please help.

1) "Beware the WOLFs," he would warn his radio and television audiences. "They have a crazy idea that all citizens should be paid fairly - even the ones who didn't have the opportunity to go to college!"

"If WOLFs force defenseless corporations to pay their employees what they need to survive, then the entire economy would collapse!"

2) "Wolf! Wolf!" screamed the Cheap Labor Conservative. "Those uppity-union organizers are anarchists and communists! If you force businesses to negotiate with unions, they will go bankrupt and hard work will never be rewarded again!"

3) "Wolf! Wolf!" frothed the cheap labor conservative. "A minimum wage would destroy small businesses and reward laziness!"

"Besides," he would add snidely, "you wouldn't want someone from a lower class to get paid the same as you - would you? If that brown-skinned person at the box-store got paid more, that would diminish your own status in society; and then where would you be?"

4) "Wolf! Wolf!" whined the Cheap Labor Conservative. "A living wage law will gut the economy! Hyper-inflation will ruin everyones savings accounts and bring disaster to us all!"

Thanks in advance.

BTW: The original post is here www.brainshrub.com/cheap-labor-conservative

The biggest one (and, admittedly, it's a personal pet-peeve): Get rid of the exclamation points. When you use 'em that liberally, you're defeating the purpose and they don't emphasize anything.

Box-store shouldn't be hyphenated. Neither should uppity-union.

In the last sentence, 'everyones' should be possessive: everyone's

Sentence #3: no semicolon after 'society'. And I don't like the 'he would add', it's passive and it just doesn't sound right. But I haven't read the original post so...grain of salt time. I'd also use a comma instead of an em-dash between 'you' and 'would you'.

There might be more but those are the ones that jumped out and beat me over the head; others can chime in.

I made the corrections on the blog.

I kept the exclamations points precisely because they don't emphasize anything. That's just the way cons talk.

also, a hyphen should be added to #4. "living wage law" should be "living-wage law."

Also caught the possessive, but I don't see anything else that needs to be added.

They have been changed.

:yourock:

"society", reyd, reid, reed? A pause seems a appropriate, and while a new sentence may be initiated with the word, "And", surely, it does not have to be. A lot of punctuation is a matter of subjective draftsmanship, as I believe this is.

I thought your spelling of the word, "snidely", was wrong, brainshrub, but checked it in the dictionary, only to find that indeed it was correct, and my notion that it should be spelt, "snidily", was wrong. Strange, really, because that seems to be how it's pronounced. Not that that's ever a wise basis for arriving at the spelling of English words!

1) "Beware the WOLFs," he would warn his radio and television audiences. "They have a crazy idea that all citizens should be paid fairly - even the ones who didn't have the opportunity to go to college!"

"If WOLFs force defenseless corporations to pay their employees what they need to survive, then the entire economy would collapse!"

If it were formal writing, I'd suggest a comma instead of a hyphen there. But a blog is a lot less strict in its rules of grammar, so a hypen probably isn't a big deal.

If those two sentences are spoken by the same person consecutively, then the quote after college! isn't necessary.

This is probably overly pedantic of me, but I think that the sentence should either use "will" instead of "would" or else should include the phrase "were to" between "WOLFs" and "force."

2) "Wolf! Wolf!" screamed the Cheap Labor Conservative. "Those uppity-union organizers are anarchists and communists! If you force businesses to negotiate with unions, they will go bankrupt and hard work will never be rewarded again!"

I'd remove the hyphen and add a comma after "bankrupt" in the second sentence.

3) "Wolf! Wolf!" frothed the cheap labor conservative. "A minimum wage would destroy small businesses and reward laziness!"

"Besides," he would add snidely, "you wouldn't want someone from a lower class to get paid the same as you - would you? If that brown-skinned person at the box-store got paid more, that would diminish your own status in society; and then where would you be?"

Maintain consistent capitalization. That is, if you capitalize Cheap Labor Conservative in the earlier sentence, capitalize it here, too.

Change the hyphen (in "same as you - would you") and the semicolon to commas.

I suggest rewording to avoid over-repetition of "would." Consider "Besides," he'd add snidely, "you wouldn't want..."

It might also be a little more pointed if you used "brown" instead of "brown-skinned," but that's just my view.

4) "Wolf! Wolf!" whined the Cheap Labor Conservative. "A living wage law will gut the economy! Hyper-inflation will ruin everyones savings accounts and bring disaster to us all!"

Someone mentioned the apostrophe in "everyones" and the abundance of exclamation points. I agree on both counts.

========================

Not bad overall, though!

Changes made.

"Wolf! Wolf!" screamed the Cheap Labor Conservative. "Those uppity-union organizers are anarchists and communists! If you force businesses to negotiate with unions, they will go bankrupt and hard work will never be rewarded again!"

You proabably want a "then" after your comma and before "they" to complete your "if/then" adverbial clause. That's nitpicking, though, so it depends on how proper you'd like it to be. :D