When did Jane leave for the market? Within dialogue: "Holy cow! To emphasize a point: My mother-in-law's rants make me furious! Comma, Semicolon, and Colon The comma, semicolon, and colon are often misused because they all can indicate a pause in a series. Direct address: Thanks for all your help, John. Separation of two complete sentences: We went to the movies, and then we went out to lunch. Separating lists or elements within sentences: Suzi wanted the black, green, and blue dress.
John was hurt; he knew she only said it to upset him. He was planning to study four subjects: politics, philosophy, sociology, and economics.
The second is between independent clauses when the second explains the first, similar to a semicolon: I didn't have time to get changed: I was already late. The third use of a colon is for emphasis: There was one thing she loved more than any other: her dog.
A colon also has non-grammatical uses in time, ratio, business correspondence and references. Dash and the Hyphen Two other common punctuation marks are the dash and hyphen.
En dash: Twice as long as a hyphen, the en dash is a symbol — that is used in writing or printing to indicate a range, connections or differentiations, such as or Princeton-New York trains. Em dash: Longer than the en dash, the em dash can be used in place of a comma, parenthesis, or colon to enhance readability or emphasize the conclusion of a sentence.
For example, She gave him her answer — No! Whether you put spaces around the em dash or not is a style choice. Just be consistent. Brackets, Braces, and Parentheses Brackets , braces, and parentheses are symbols used to contain words that are a further explanation or are considered a group.
He [Mr. Jones] was the last person seen at the house. John and Jane who were actually half brother and sister both have red hair. Apostrophe, Quotation Marks and Ellipsis The final three punctuation forms in English grammar are the apostrophe , quotation marks, and ellipsis. Examples of the apostrophe in use include: Omission of letters from a word: I've seen that movie several times.
She wasn't the only one who knew the answer. Possessive case: Sara's dog bit the neighbor. Plural for lowercase letters: Six people were told to mind their p's and q's. Single quotation marks ' ' are used most frequently for quotes within quotes. What does virgule mean? When to use the slash Like many typographic symbols, the slash has found its very own special place in pop culture. Below are some more standard uses of the this small but might punctuation mark.
To show relationships and conflict An interesting aspect of this popular symbol is its ability to be verbalized in various ways depending on the context.
Most acronyms these days are written without the slash though. Blame social media! To structure URLs Further uses of the slash have developed relatively recently due to technology of course. This practice is also a bit outdated, most people reference poems, lines of prose, and lyrics without the slash now.
Synonym of the day Nov 11, Introduce lists, text or tabular material —Capitalize the first word after the colon only if it is a proper noun or the start of a complete sentence. Our future is dependent on three things: sustainability, diversity, and enhancing our strength and health.
Clarify the titles of books, lectures and other compositions —Use a colon in titles that express two parallel ideas. The words on either side of the colon should be able to stand on their own. A semicolon has two general uses: to clarify a series and to indicate two closely related sentences. Series —If one or more elements in a series contain a comma, use semicolons to separate them.
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