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PUNCTUATION

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28 views12 pages

PUNCTUATION

Uploaded by

ali.ebad428
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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PUNCTUATION

Sentence Endings (.)


Three of the fourteen punctuation marks are appropriate for use as sentence endings.
They are the period, question mark, and exclamation point.
The period (.) is placed at the end of declarative sentences, statements thought to be
complete and after many abbreviations.
•At the end of a sentence: Jane and Jack went to the market.
• After an abbreviation: Her son, John Jones Jr., was born on Dec. 6th, 2008.
Use a question mark (?) to indicate a direct question when placed at the end of a
sentence.
•When did Jane leave for the market?
The exclamation mark (!) is used when a person wants to express a sudden outcry or
add emphasis.
•Within the dialogue: “Oh my God!” screamed Jane.
•To emphasize a point: My younger sister’s rants make me furious!
Exclamation ( ! )
The exclamation mark is usually used after an exclamation or interjection. It is
intended to indicate strong feelings and convey emotion, as well as to indicate
shouting or high volume. Like a period or question mark, an exclamation point
typically comes at the end of a sentence. It is most often seen in informal text.
Use an exclamation mark at the end of a strong command, an interjection,
or an emphatic declaration.
• “Stop!” he yelled. “You’ve got two flat tires!”
Exclamation points may be used to convey extreme emotion at the end of a
question.
• What is wrong with you! Stop writing on the walls!

• An interjection is a word or phrase that is grammatically


independent from the words around it, and mainly expresses feeling
rather than meaning. Oh, what a beautiful house! Uh-oh, this looks
bad. Well, it's time to say good night
Colon (:)
•One common use of the colon is to introduce: a speaker, a list, an idea,
an explanation or conclusion of an earlier statement
To make the perfect jam sandwich you need three things: some bread,
butter and strawberry jam.

We cancelled tonight’s production: the lead actor is sick.


After a few weeks together, Sarah came to her conclusion: Anne wasn’t
as intelligent as she pretended to be.

• A colon is especially useful for adding emphasis to part of a sentence.


I enjoy one subject the most: English.
• Use a colon in time expression.
It is 12:30
.
Semicolon (;)
A semicolon creates a break – more than a comma, less than a full
stop. It’s used to add variety by joining short sentences.
• It can join two closely related main clauses without a connective.
Bring your reading book tomorrow; you will need it in first lesson.

• It is used before a connective (e.g. namely, however, therefore, for


example, finally, on the other hand) when it introduces a complete
sentence.
You will need to bring some money; however, don’t bring too much.
• It separates list items where a comma might cause confusion.
The school has students from Paris, France; Tehran, Iran; and Lima,
Peru.
Brackets / parentheses ( )
Examples:

• An explanation: Cairo (the capital city of Egypt) is near the Nile delta.
• Additional information: Mount Elbrus in Russia (at 5642 metres) is the highest mountain in
Europe.

• An aside or afterthought: I watched the match (which was brilliant) before going to bed.
The most commonly used bracket in English is the parentheses. This pair of round brackets is
used when a writer wants to add information to a sentence that will give greater detail to the
information presented. However, the information is extra and not really necessary, which
means that it can be removed with ease and without damaging the original information. Items
placed in parentheses can often be set off with commas as well.
Sentence examples using parentheses:

• George Washington (the first president of the United States) gave his farewell
address in 1796. (In this sentence, the parenthesis is giving additional information
about George Washington.)

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) launched its first Mars

probe (Viking I) back in 1976. (In this sentence, the parentheses is explaining

what NASA stands for and giving additional information about the Mars
probe.)
Dashes ( -- )
Dashes are longer than hyphen. A single dash can signal:
•a dramatic pause
•an afterthought or a comment
•an additional information
After eighty years of dreaming, the elderly man realized it
was time to finally revisit the land of his youth—Ireland.
The fairgrounds—cold and wet in the October rain—were
deserted.
Hyphen (-)
• A hyphen is a short line that links words together to create one idea.

x-ray, ten-year-old, sugar-free.


It is used to form some compound words.
• A hyphen has rules:
It is used to hold pair of words together to help to make their meaning clear (as in the compound

adjectives ‘hard-working’)
2. It is used in sentence construction, to show that certain words in a sentence are meant to be read
together.
3. It is used at the end of a line when a word has to be split and has to be continued on the line below.
4. Numbers between twenty-one and ninety-nine should be hyphenated when they’re spelled out
.
5. Hyphen in Compound Adjective with Fractions

6. Hyphen with Prefixes: Ex-, Self-, All-


I’ve got a hundred and twenty-two of these gadgets to sell.
A quarter-million dollar is still a large amount of money.
It’s a bad leader who thinks of himself as all-powerful.
Ellipses ( … )
The ellipsis is most commonly represented by three periods (. . . ) although it is
occasionally demonstrated with three asterisks (***). The ellipsis is used in writing
or printing to indicate an omission, especially of letters or words. Ellipses are
frequently used within quotations to jump from one phrase to another, omitting
unnecessary words that do not interfere with the meaning. Students writing research
papers or newspapers quoting parts of speeches will often employ ellipsis to avoid
copying lengthy text that is not needed.
• Omission of words: She began to count, "One, two, three, four…" until she got to
10, then went to find him.
• Within a quotation: When Newton stated, "An object at rest stays at rest and an
object in motion stays in motion..." he developed the law of motion.
Apostrophe ( ' )
• Possessive case: Sara's dog bit the neighbour.

Quotations marks ( ? )
Quotation marks or inverted commas (informally known as quotes and speech marks) are
punctuation marks used in pairs to mark a section of text as speech, a quotation, a phrase, or an unusual
word. They are used in groups of 2, as a pair of opening and closing marks. e.g.

• "Don't go outside," she said.


Single quotation marks (') are used most frequently for quotes within quotes or for emphasis.
• Marie told the teacher, "I saw Liza at the playground, and she said to me 'Ann started the fight,' and I
believed her.”

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