How to use punctuation marks

Why is punctuation important?

Punctuation is the action of inserting symbols or marks into texts to help interpretation. It is necessary for writing. You could write without it, but the reader wouldn't understand what you wrote. Punctuation is just as crucial to your writing as word choice, syntax, and structure. You cannot have a coherent piece of writing if any one of these components is absent. In other words, punctuation is essential in written English to clarify sentence meaning.

Basic Punctuation Rules

Here are the punctuation marks that end a sentence.

 

The full stop

A full stop is placed at the end of a declarative sentence. It shows that the sentence is finished. It is also known as a period. It is also known as a period. After the full stop, use a capital letter to start the following sentence. It looks like a dot .

·         The elephant has a long trunk and big ears.

·         It eats grass, leaves, and other vegetation.

 

Question mark

If you write a question, put a question mark at the end of the sentence. It indicates that the sentence is a direct question. It looks like ? 

·         Can you ride a bicycle?

·         How many apples are there?

·         Where is your car?

 

Exclamation mark

Exclamation mark is used when a person wants to express a sudden feeling. It makes a sentence sound more exciting. It suggests that someone is surprised, happy, angry, or scared. It is also known as an exclamation point. It looks like !

·         What a cute cat!

·         We won the competition!

The following punctuation marks tell the reader to pause in a series.

Comma

A comma is the most common punctuation mark, and it is frequently used. It indicates a pause in a sentence, either between phrases, clauses, or items in a list. It looks like ,

·         You can have an apple, an orange, a banana, or some grapes.

·         The balloons are red, yellow, green, and blue.

It separates two complete sentences too.

·         I’m older than Jessica, but she’s taller than me.

·         Owls are nocturnal, so they come out at night.

 It is also used to separate out part of a sentence that is extra information.

·         John, who is in my class, is really good at swimming.

·         Young bears, which are born in the winter, have to learn to find food.

 

Colon

Colon is used to introduce a list. You can also use a colon to join two ideas together into one sentence. The second idea explains the first idea. It looks like :

·         These are my favourite sports: hockey, basketball, and tennis.

·         Lions are predators: They hunt and kill other animals for food.

 

Semicolon

It is used to connect two independent clauses into a sentence to show that the ideas are closely linked. Never use a capital letter after a semicolon unless it’s the first letter of a proper noun. It looks like ;

·         There are lots of monkeys in the safari park; there are elephants and giraffes, too.

·         My uncle can make animals out of balloons; he’s going to teach me how to do it.

 

Dash

A dash is used to separate one part of the sentence from the rest. It is often used to add an extra comment or an opinion at the end of a sentence. It looks like -

·         Jack finally came home two hours later-very wet and muddy!

·         Sara’s got a pet hamster-it’s so cute!

It also separate out part of a sentence that is extra information.

·         For my birthday, I had a chocolate cake -which is my favourite- and lots of other tasty food!

 

Hyphen

Hyphen might look like a dash, but it isn’t a dash. Hyphen is used to create compound words. It joins together two words (or sometimes more!). The joined-up words are usually used to describe a noun. It looks like -

 

·         a double-decker bus

·         a seven-year-old boy

·         a man-eating shark

 

Hyphen is used in numbers such as twenty-three, thirty-five, or ninety-nine.

 

Ellipsis

Ellipsis shows that a sentence is not finished. It suggests that there is more to say about something. It also indicates an omission, especially of letters or words. It looks like a set of three periods together ...

·         “I found this key in the shed, but ... I don’t think it’s the right one.”

·         She started to count, "One, two, three, four… ten”.

  

Another set of punctuation marks includes apostrophes, quotation marks, parentheses, square brackets, and curly braces.

 

Apostrophe

An apostrophe is used to indicate the omission of a letter or letters from a word. It looks like ’

·         She’s a very good dancer.

·         We’ve got a new car.

 

It is used with an s to show who something belongs to. This is called a possessive apostrophe.

·         These are Olivia’s shoes.

·         The chick’s feathers are yellow.

 

Quotation marks

They are used to write about what people say to each other. When a person writes someone’s exact words. The words inside quotation marks always start with a capital letter. The person who says the words can come before or after the words themselves. It looks like “ ”

·         Sam said, “Look at this map”.

·         “Look at this map,” Sam said.

 

Parentheses

They separate out part of a sentence that is extra information. You put parentheses around it to show that it is additional information and isn’t the most important thing you are saying. The rest of the sentence should still make sense if you take out the part in parentheses. They can be replaced by commas without changing the meaning. It looks like ( )

·         My new kitten (white with pink paws) is really cute.

·         We played on Sophie’s new trampoline (which was amazing).

 

Square brackets

Square brackets are used to clarify meaning. If you remove the information in the brackets, the sentence will still make sense. It looks like [ ]

·         She [Mrs. Rima] was the last one attended the meeting.

·         “I loved it [my cat]. I couldn’t stay away from it,” Christi said.

 

Curly braces

Curly braces are not common to be used outside programming, physics, and mathematical expressions. If they are used in a piece of writing, they’re usually used to indicate a list. It looks like { }

 

Now, you are familiar with the basic punctuation marks in the English language. Grammar and punctuation complement each other, so it is important to learn the 4 types of sentence structure in English too.