Importance of Punctuation marks. Writing for Academic and Professional Success.

"Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language, they tell us slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop".            

            ( Lynne Truss) 

Inorder to make the reader understand the message that we intended, it is essential to follow  correct punctuation rules. Wrong use of punctuation is one of the main reasons for miscommunication in written works. The meaning of a sentence depends on where the punctuation is placed.

Punctuation plays an important role in making your writing clear and accurate. Wrong use of punctuation is often looked at as a sign of imperfect education. The punctuation marks that are quite essential in achieving perfection in academic writing include comma, colon, semi colon, period, brackets, dash, hyphen, parenthesis, and quotation marks.

Comma(,)

Comma tells the reader to pause or the word preceding the comma is part of a list.

Semi colon ( ;)

A semi colon indicates a pause or a break in a sentence which is longer than comma but shorter than a period.

Colon(:)

Colons are often used in formal and informal contexts. To desperate two independent clauses where the first introduces or explains the second.

Double Quotation Mark(“")

Quotation marks help us to differentiate ideas/words of others from your own ideas.

Single quotation Mark(`')

The single quotation mark become useful when we introduce a word or phrase as a technical term. When a  quote within a quote comes, we can use single quotation mark within the quote.

The word ' ecology' derives from the Greek word 'oikos' 

Apostrophe (`)

The main use of apostrophe is to indicate a contraction or a possession. It also used to form the plural of a number, letter, symbol, abbreviation etc

Boy's

Girl's

Parentheses and Brackets () [] 

Parenthesis is the use of a phrase, word or sentence that's added into writing as extra information or an afterthought. 

Brackets are used to insert a clarification, a translation, parenthesis within parenthesis.

William Shakespeare (1564- 1616)

Dash(__) 

Dash is also called 'em dash'  and it's larger than en dash(--) and the hyphen(-). Em dash is three time larger than hyphen. Em dash is used to replace a colon, comma, or parenthesis. 

No student-- not even the leader of the student union-- was present to receive the chief guest. 

En dash (--) 

 En dash is used to indicate inclusive page numbers and dates. 

Guidelines are provided in on pages 41-49

Hyphen

Usually used in compound words. hyphanated words are common in combound words and combound numbers. 

Long - lasting

Well- written 

Seventy- five

Sixty- four

Period

The period is considered as the simplest punctuation mark. Period falls at the end of a sentence. 

Capitalisation

Capitalisation refers to writing the first letter of a word in uppercase and the rest in lowercase. Capitalize verbs Main verbs in the title.