English for Everybody. Elementary Course: Punctuation.

Getting to grips with...

Punctuation

What is punctuation?
Punctuation is a way of marking a sentence so it is easier to understand. Punctuation helps you to see the grammar of a sentence and which parts belong together. It also helps you to understand how the sentences would sound if the person using them was speaking instead of writing. However, many people find punctuation very confusing, and even many native English speakers use punctuation badly or even wrongly. Here we will look at basic punctuation and how to use it, and in the rest of the unit you will find exercises to help you practice. If you want to see some more complicated punctuation have a look at the intermediate and advanced parts of the course.

How do we learn punctuation?
Because punctuation is not a natural part of spoken language, everyone has to learn how to use it. Remember that punctuation is not the same in every language. Even in Europe, almost every language has its own punctuation and rules about how to use it. The best way to learn punctuation is to look at books and see how the punctuation is used there. (Try to look at fiction, as more kinds of punctuation are used, but not at comics or cartoons as they do not use standard punctuation. Also do not look at punctuation as it is used in web forums or emails - this is sometimes very far from the 'correct' form.)

What punctuation will I learn in this unit?
In this unit we will look at the comma, the semi-colon ; and the full stop . You will know a lot of this already, but there are some parts that may still surprise you.

The comma

As we have seen, one of the jobs of pronunciation is so that written text can be understood as speech. All speech has a natural rhythm. We say parts of a word (syllables) at a certain speed, and pause between them for a certain time. If the speed we say each syllable of a word is one beat, then a comma is a pause in the sentence for the same amount of time - one beat.
For example:This sentence
'We are going to the international airport now, and will be back, I think, this afternoon.'
can be made into syllables with the same beat like this
'We-are-going-to-the-in-ter-natio-nal-air-port-now- -and-will-be-back- -I think- - this afternoon.'
The places where there is a gap - - are where the comma in speech is shown by a silence lasting as long as it takes to say one of the syllables.

When do we use commas?
As you have seen, when we would pause for one beat in normal speech, we should insert a comma into the text. This is neccessary because sometimes whether or not a sentence has a comma can change the meaning. For example:
'A dark, red house.'
is not the same as
'A dark red house.'
In the first sentence we know the house is red - perhaps bright red - but that there are no lights showing inside it. In the second sentence we know that the colour of the house is dark red, but not whether there are any lights showing.

Commas are used with link words (usually and, but, for, or, nor, so or yet) to join phrases that would otherwise be two sentences.
For example:
'I'll be here for an hour. Then I'll go to the bank.'
has the same meaning as
'I'll be here for an hour, and then I'll go to the bank.'

Commas also show you which parts of a sentence belong together.
For example:In this non-defining relative clause
'Mr Smith, who is a greengrocer, lives in Oxford.'
the part which tells us about Mr Smith's job is separated from where he lives by commas.

The Semi-colon

Where a comma takes one 'beat' of normal speech, the semi-colon, like the full stop, takes two. This is because a semi-colon is used to put two separate clauses into one sentence, often without using a link word in the way that a comma does. (One way to tell whether you can use a semi-colon instead of a comma is whether you can make the clauses into two sentences.)
For example:
'I'll be here for an hour. Then I'll go to the bank.'
can be written as
'I'll be here for an hour; then I'll go to the bank.'

Link words with semi-colons
Some link words can be used with semi-colons because they show that even if the clauses are grammatically independent, they carry on the same idea.
For example:
'Semi-colons do not need link words; however this does not mean we never use them .'
'Semi-colons are useful; therefore it's a good idea to use them.'
'He used a semi-colon; consequently his text was more understandable.'
'Use semi-colons; otherwise there's no point in learning about them.'

Semi-colons with lists
You can make a list with commas, but when you need to be very clear what parts go together then using a semi-colon is better. Consider this sentence. 'He saw Ms Wilson, the secretary, Mr Jones, the manager and their boss walking into the room.' Are there five people walking into the room, or three, or two ? (Mr Jones can be the manager and their boss). You can make the sentence easier to understand by writing 'He saw Ms Wilson, the secretary; Mr Jones, the manager; and their boss walking into the room.' Now we know you are talking about three people.

The full stop

In American English this is called the 'period'. We see it most often at the end of the sentence. (In fact, one rule of academic writing is that you should give one fact in each sentence and one idea in a paragraph. So when you come to a full stop, you know that you have received information about one fact.) However, there are also other uses for the full stop.

Full stops are used to indicate abbreviations where the word has been cut short. Though there are many different methods to use when deciding whether or not to use a full stop, it is less important which rule you use, and more important that you use the same rule all the time. We suggest you should use a full stop if the word does not have its first and last letters. So 'Professor' is abbreviated to 'Prof.' with a full stop, but 'Mr' has no full stop because it has the first and last letters.

With acronyms (words made from the first letters of a longer phrase), the general rule is that if you spell the letters you put a full stop after them (e.g. with the World Health Organization, the abbreviation is W.H.O. because you say the letters, but we say 'Nato' for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization because we say it as a word). Exceptions are words which are very well known and the letters are said very quickly as a word - for example the USA ('Uesaye') and the BBC ('Beebesee'). Also, remember that if you finish a sentence with an abbreviation that ends with a full stop, this full stop is also the full stop for the end of the sentence. So you would say that 'Mr Juarez works for the U.N.' with only one full stop at the end, even though this full stop finishes both the 'N' and the sentence.

Finally, note that with titles of (for example) chapters you do not use a full stop, which is why the titles of the sections in this text do not have full stops, although they sometimes have question marks.

Okay, so we have learned commas, which are easy; semi-colons, which are a bit harder; and full stops, where there are a few extra rules to learn; e.g. that we write 'e.g.' with full stops because this is an abbreviation of 'exempia gratia'. Now let's try some exercises!

Let's go!