Punctuation – Meaning or Madness?

The full stop: –

• The full stop is used to mark the end of a sentence.
• A common mistake is to join two sentences with a comma instead of separating them with a full stop.

The question mark: –

• The question mark is used for a direct question.
  • Would you wait for me?

The exclamation mark: –

• The exclamation mark comes at the end of a sentence to replace the full stop when there is a need to indicate surprise or any strong emotion.
  • I have won it!
  • I did it!
  • Good grief!
  • Get out!
  • Shut up!

The comma: –

• To separate items in a list.
• To clarify the meaning of a sentence.
• To separate the clauses in a sentence.
• To separate the non-defining clause from the main clause
  • Bryan, who has a pleasant smile, is my neighbour.
• To start off replies to questions, for question tags, and direct speech.
  • Yes, please.
  • No, thank you.
• To separate the phrase in a sentence
  • The postman, a really friendly person, was attacked by a savage dog.
  • The boy, running desperately away from the bully, fell into a drain.
• Before but, nor and or
  • (This is optional depending on the length of the sentence.)
    • It was not a difficult decision for him to make, but he had no choice.
    • It was not my decision to dismiss the worker, nor was it the Manager’s.
    • Hew knew he had to confront the bully, or face the embarrassment of being frequently insulted.

The semicolon: –

The colon: –

The dash and dashes: –

Dot: –

Inverted commas: –

The hyphen: –

The apostrophe: –

Brackets: –