UNDERSTANDING OF PUNCTUATION

APOSTROPHE ()
MAIN USES: To show the omission of one or more letters in a contraction. Examples: I + am = Im It + is = its To show ownership or possession. Example: The grades possessed by James Jamess grades Apostrophe versus Simple Plurals: Tonys broad shoulders, rippling muscles and warm eyes. Apostrophe with Plural Words Ending in S My Parents wagon is ten years old. All the boy scouts tents were damaged by the hail storm.

QUOTATION MARKS ( ) MAIN USES: To set off the exact words of a speaker or a writer. Example:
Mark Twain once wrote, The more I known about human beings, the more I like my dog. The instructor said, The only dump question is the one you dont ask.

To set off the titles of short works (Title of long works are underlined) Example: The chapter Why Do Men Marry? In the book Passages Quotation marks are not used with indirect quotations.

COMMA (,)
Comma are used mainly as follow: To separate items in a series Do you drink tea with milk, lemon, or honey? To set of introductory material After punching the alarm clock with his fist, Bill turned over and went back to sleep. Between two thoughts connected by and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet. The wedding was scheduled for four o clock, but the bride changed her mind at two. To set off a direct quotation from the rest of a sentence His father shouted, Why dont you go and get a job? Opening and Closing of Letters Dear Larry, Yours truly,

COLON (:)
Use the colon at the end of a complete statement to introduce: List The following were my worst job: truck loader in an apple plant, assembler in a battery factory, and attendant in a state mental hospital. Long Quotation Thoreau explains in Walden: I went to the wood because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came die, discover that I had not lived. Explanation There are two softball leagues in our town: the fastpitched league and the lob pitched league.

SEMICOLON (;) It is used to mark between two complete thoughts. The Sun was already low in the sky; it would soon be dark. DASH () A dash signals a degree of pause longer than a comma but not as complete as a period. I didnt go out with him a second time - once was more than enough. To set off words for dramatic effect (be careful not to overuse dashes) Men were shouting, women were screaming, children were crying it was chaos.

HYPEN (-) To form a compound from two or more Hard-hearted Fork-lift truck In British English, to separate a prefix ending in a vowel from a word beginning with the same vowel Co-operate Pre-eminent PARENTHESES ( ) Used to set off extra information from the rest of a sentence (Do not use too often) The section of that book on medical dangers of cancer (page 35 to 72) is outdated.