Punctuation

Why?

•Writers use capital letters and punctuation marks to help the reader better understand what is written.

Capital Letters• All sentences begin with capital

letters.• Proper nouns always begin with

capital letters.• The pronoun I is always

capitalized.• A capital letter begins the first,

last, and any important word in the title of a book, magazine, song, movie, poem, or other work.

Punctuation: Period

• Use a period at the end of a sentence that makes a statement, requests something, or gives a mild command.– Travis hated the school lunch

today.(statement)

– Listen carefully so that you don’t make the same mistake again.(mild command)

Punctuation: Period

• Most abbreviations end with a period. •Ms. Zadai’s English class is totally awesome!•Dr. Carbone lives on Lear Nagle Rd.

Punctuation: Question & Exclamation

• A question ends with a question mark.• Why are you sleeping in class, Mr. Harris?

• A statement expressing strong feeling or excitement ends with an exclamation point.• What a beautiful day it is!

Punctuation: Comma

• A comma comes between two independent clauses. • Stefanie finished her book,

and then she went to bed.

• A comma separates an interruption from the rest of the sentence.• Mr. Piechalski, another

English teacher, can be very loud.

Punctuation: Comma

• A comma separates words, phrases, or clauses in a series. (A series contains at least 3 items.• We had salad, spaghetti, and

breadsticks for dinner.• A comma separates items in an

address or date.• North Ridgeville, Ohio• May 13, 1980

Punctuation: Colon & Semicolon

• A colon shows the reader that a list or explanation follows.• I will need the following items: scissors,

paper, glue, and paint.• A semicolon joins two or more closely

related independent clauses that are not connected with a coordinating conjunction.• I did not call myself a poet; I told people I

wrote poems.

Punctuation: Apostrophe

• Use an apostrophe to:• Show that one or more

letters have been left out of a word to form a contraction.• Hadn’t they’d it’s class of ‘99

• Form the plural of a letter, a number, a sign, or a word discussed as a word by adding an s.• B’s and’s do’s don’ts

Punctuation: Hyphens

• Use a hyphen to make compound words.– Great-grandmother three-year-old

• Use a hyphen to join a capital letter or a lowercase letter to a noun or participle.– T-shirt U-turn G-rated

• Use a hyphen to join the words in compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine.– Four-tenths twenty-five

Punctuation: Dashes• Use a dash to indicate a sudden

break or change in the sentence.• Near the year’s end—and this

is mostly due to poor planning—a lot of students realize they should do make-up work.

• Use a dash to set off parenthetical material – material that explains or clarifies a word or a phrase.• A single incident—a tornado

that came without warning—changed the face of the small town forever.

• Use a dash to indicate interrupted speech. - Mama, why are you--

Punctuation: Parentheses

• Use parentheses to set off explanatory or added material that interrupts the normal sentence structure.– Bella (our dog) sits in on the piano

lessons (on the piano bench), must to the teacher’s suprise and amusement.

• When using a full sentence within another sentence, do not capitalize it or use a period inside the parentheses.– Since your friend won’t have the

assignment (he was just thinking about calling you), you’ll have to make a couple more calls to actually get it.

Italics (Underlining) 

• Use italics to indicate the titles of magazine, newspapers, pamphlets, books, full-length plays, films, videos, radio and television programs, book-length poems, ballets, operas, paintings, lengthy musical compositions, cassettes, CD’s, legal cases, and the names of ships and aircraft.