Punctuation
Punctuations
Punctuation’s purpose is to help the reader understand what the writer means. Thus, there is a certain amount of freedom in the use of various marks, particularly the comma. The uses noted bellow are generally adhered to, yet not everyone would agree with them.
- The apostrophe (‘)
- To mark omissions in contracted forms
- In the word o’clock
- To indicate possession, origin, measures.
- The colon (:)
- To introduce a list
- After the names of speakers, when writing dialogue
- The comma (,)
- After yes or no in a response
- Before the connective in a long compound sentence
- To separate equivalent sentences parts in a series
- To group large numbers into thousands
- To set off the addressee in direct address
- To separate an introductory clause from the rest of the sentence
- After a mild exclamation
- Before and after an appositive
- To separate a tag question from the rest of the sentence
- Before and after a non-restrictive adjective clause
- The hyphen (-)
- To certain fixed expressions: person-to-person, station-to-station
- In compound numerals
- At the end of a line when dividing a word ( you should respect the rule of Dividing words)
- The period (.)
- At the end of every statement
- After most abbreviations
- In the expressions a.m. and p.m.
- To indicate cents and other decimals
- The question mark (?)
- At the end of a direct question
- After a tag question
- Quotation marks (“…”)
- To include the actual words of a speaker
- Around foreign words used in English sentences
- The semicolon (;)
- In a compound sentence without a connective
- Between phrases in a series when thy contain commas
- capital letters
- The first word of every senesce
- Titles
- Proper nouns: names of people, places, courses…
- Adjectives derived from names of nations: = English, = Moroccan …etc
- The days of the week
- Holidays
- Months of the year.