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As a newish crossworder I'm not entirely sure of the current spread of opinions on Ximenean principles.

His central tenet seems to be that:

"A good cryptic clue contains three elements:

a precise definition

a fair subsidiary indication

nothing else"

In Clueless 431 on this site, Paul (@post 3) reported his own use of speech-marks which he attests were personal and unnecessary.

My question to you great and good, and not so good, is: does the above Ximenean tenet allow or prohibit extraneous punctuation points?

Or doesn't it matter because Mr X is only one point of view?

Genuinely curious, in that punctuation points can be a useful, or even vital part of misdirection in a good clue.

Spurious punctuation is often used for misdirection. A good rule of thumb is to ignore all punctuation when solving.
Spurious capitlisation/non-capitlisation is another matter. I'm not sure, but I think the former is accepted more than the latter.

I agree with the points made by My Learned Friend chrise.

(And now, having had a bed delivered at 7am, and been subsequently involved in early-morning crossword philosophy, I need a lie down ...)

The principles set out in 'Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword' have further evolved in the 53 years since they were first established, and they form (with a few minor variations) the standards for the diagram construction and clueing seen in barred crosswords published in the UK (in particular the Listener, Azed and Mephisto series, and puzzles appearing in the Magpie magazine). In essence, the goal is to achieve fairness to the solver (which was, and some would say still is, often lacking in 'libertarian' crosswords) whilst not depriving the setter of the means to deceive.

A maxim frequently quoted is that of Ximenes' predecessor, Afrit, who wrote: "I need not mean what I say, but I must say what I mean." In other words, a clue as a whole can superficially appear to mean one thing but, when read another way, can have a sound cryptic interpretation which is entirely different.

It has long been accepted that punctuation separating the wordplay and the definition is not essential. Beyond that, Ximenes' view was that punctuation which was - strictly speaking - necessary to the cryptic interpretation could reasonably be omitted, but that the introduction of misleading punctuation was unfair to the solver. However, I believe that he was referring specifically to marks which introduce confusing pauses or breaks. In his book 'The A-Z of Crosswords', Jonathan Crowther (Azed, whom many consider the heir of Ximenes) wrote: 'If there is a comma in a clue, but the cryptic reading of the clue only works without it being there, the setter is taking unwarranted liberties and not playing fair by solvers. Similarly a hyphen between parts of a word binds the two parts into a single compound unit. Expecting solvers to treat this unit as two separate words in order for the clue to work is also unfair." So 'second-best' could not constitute the wordplay for STOP, for instance.

I can't, however, think of a situation where the inclusion or omission of quotation marks would be considered even by the 'non-libertarians' among us to be unfair to the solver.

Thank you Spoffy for this erudite and clear reply - I will mind my ways in future.

My comments weren't aimed at Paul - I just felt that he raised an interesting question, which you have conclusively answered: I am very grateful.

On the hyphen point, recently in the Guardian (at least) there has been a trend to set so called "lift and spearate" clues, where a word must be split into two for solving. I rather like them.

This is an example
Suppliers of milkshakes not keeping quiet (6)

Yet, ChrisE, would this example not rate as unfair (or even more unfair) - according to Crowther's dictum as cited by Spoffy?

As I said, I like that sort of construction.

Here's another contentious example, from today's Guardian

VAT not applied initially on large fish (3)

I think that's less than udderly contentious!

Or, ChrisE, here's the 'unfair' phenomenon the other way around, in today's Eye Crossword (No.655):

8 They pierce the gloom of tabloid bars (3-5 - Cyclops says!)