Punctuation

Make It Your Ally; It’s Powerful

Punctuation We’ll Cover Today

▪ Commas (,)

▪ Semicolons (;)

▪ Colons (:)

▪ Dashes (--)

▪ Hyphens (-)

The Six Most-Common Comma Rules

Between Two Independent Clauses Patrick loves baseball, and he coaches his son’s team. FANBOYS: For, And, Nor, But, Yet, So For an Introduction In the morning, she runs with her dog. When she lied, he left her. For a List or Series We need punch, balloons, and cupcakes. For a Nonessential Element The park, which has a lake, is a mile away.

Commas Rules . . .

▪ For Direct Address

Lorelei, I want you to come here.

I want you, Lorelei, to come here.

I want you to come here, Lorelei.

Between Two Adjectives Before a Noun

The sweet, old lady is rich and will die soon.

The red brick building is beautiful.

Semicolons

▪ To Separate Two Independent Clauses With No Conjunction

Semeli loves to cook; she even takes cooking classes.

To Separate Items That Have Internal Punctuation

We visited Dublin, Ireland, Barcelona, Spain, Rome, Italy.

What’s wrong with the above sentence?

We visited Dublin, Ireland; Barcelona, Spain; Rome, Italy.

We should have these items on hand: plates, cups, forks; paper, pens, erasers; candy, cupcakes, ice cream.

Colons

▪ To Introduce a Long Quote

▪ When the Second Independent Clause Explains the First

She loved her class: It made her think, and she learned.

To Introduce a List but It Can’t Follow a Verb

We need these items for the office party: cups, plates, and forks.

We need: cups, plates and forks.

Hyphen

▪ To Unify Elements

second-place team

tenth-anniversary party

first-period class

Dashes

▪ To Separate for Emphasis

Exhausted – she collapsed after work.

He asked her to marry him – finally!

That student – the one in the green shirt – drives me nuts!