There are two major styles of punctuation in English: American or “traditional punctuation” and British punctuation or “logical punctuation”. These two styles differ mainly in the way in which they handle quotation marks.
· The apostrophe (‘) is used to mark possession as in John’s book, and to mark letters omitted in contractions, such as you’re for you are.
· Brackets ({} [] ()) are used for parenthesis, explanation or comment: such as “ John Smith (the elder, not his son…”)
· The colon (:) is used to explain or start an enumeration.
· The semicolon (;) is often used to break up listings with commas: “She saw three men: Jamie, who came from New Zealand; John, the milkman’s son; and George, a gaunt kind of man.”
· The comma (,) is used to disambiguate the meaning of sentences. For example,
· The dash (-) is a horizontal line that shows a pause or break in meaning, or that represents missing words or letters.
a) Use a dash to show a pause or break in meaning in middle of a sentence: My sisters – Asya and Rukiya – are visiting China.
b) Use a dash to show an afterthought: I attached the photo to my email – at least I hope I did it.
c) Use a dash like a colon to introduce a list: Don’t forget to buy some food – bread, eggs, tuna and cheese.
d) Use a dash to show that letters or words are missing: He will look – – – – the children.
There are two kinds of dash: 1) the en-dash (-), which is width of the letter “n”
And 2) the em-dash (–), which is width of the letter “m”
· The hyphen (-) is a very short horizontal line between words. There is no space between a hyphen and the character on either side of it.
a) Use a hyphen to join words to show that their meaning is linked in some way: book-case (or bookcase)
b) Use a hyphen to make compound modifiers before nouns: a blue-eyed boy (but The boy was blue eyed)
c) Use a hyphen with certain prefixes. The prefixes all-, ex-, and self usually need a hyphen: Ex-wife
d) Use a hyphen when writing numbers 21 to 99, and fractions: twenty-one, two-thirds
e) Use a hyphen to show that a word has been broken at the end of a line: It was conven-
ient time.
f) Use a hyphen with “suspended compounds”. When we use several very similar compounds together, it may not be necessary to repeat the last part of the compound: 1) They need to employ more full- and part- time staff. (not They need to employ more full-time and part-time staff.) 2) This rule applies only to 12-, 13- and 14- year olds. (not This rule applies only to 12-year olds, 13- year olds and 14- year olds.)
· An ellipsis (…) is used to mark omitted text.
· The exclamation mark (!) is used to mark an exclamation.
· The full stop (Brirish), or period (American) (.) is used to mark the end of a sentence. It is also use to mark abbreviation of names as initials.
· Quotation marks are used to mark Quotation.
· The question mark (?) is used to mark the end of a sentence which is a question.
· The slash or stroke or solidus (/) is used to indicate alternatives, such as “his/her”, or two equivalent meanings or spellings, such as “grey/gray.
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