Common Mistakes in Written English 8 - Punctuation |
1. Capital Letter a. for the first letter of
a sentence b. for days, months and festivals c. for names of people, organizations,
places and events d. for people's titles e. for titles of books, films,
newspapers and magazines f. for nationalities, languages
and religions g. for abbreviations * In a title, the first word
and every word, except articles and prepositions, are capitalized. ** Names of school subjects
need not be capitalized.
Single quotation marks ('¡K') are more usual in UK English, and double quotation marks ("¡K") are more usual in US English. a. Direct speech - Direct speech is inside
quotation marks or inverted commas. - If you put something like
he said after the direct speech, you put a comma in front of the second
quotation mark (not a full stop) because the sentence is not yet complete.
If the direct speech is a question or an exclamation, you put a question
mark or an exclamation mark instead. - If you then give another
sentence said by the same person, you start it with a capital letter
and put quotation marks round it. - If you put something like
he said within a sentence in direct speech, you put a comma after the
first piece of direct speech and after he said, and you start the continuation
of the direct speech with quotation marks. Note that you do not give
the first word of the continuation a capital letter. - For a quotation within
a quotation, we use double quotation marks inside single (or single
inside double). - When a sentence is in reported
speech, a full stop should be used at the end of the sentence. b. Special use of words
a. A comma ( , ) can be used
after an adverb clause when it comes first in a sentence. b. No comma is used before
a noun clause. c. No comma is used before
a defining relative clause. d. When nouns are followed
by identifying expressions which show exactly who or what is being talked
about, commas are not used. e. A comma should be used
after a participle phrase. f. If words or expressions
are put in unusual places or interrupt the normal progression of a sentence,
we usually separate them off by commas. g. We use commas to separate
items in a series or list. However, a comma is not usually used with
¡¥and¡¦ between the last two items. h. A single adjective modifying
a noun is sometimes so necessary that it may be considered a part of
the identification: drinking glass, red dress, pine tree. Another adjective
preceding such an adjective-noun phrase functions as if it modified
the entire phrase and is not separated from the phrase by a comma: large
drinking glass, beautiful red dress, tall pine tree. i. A comma is placed before
the word 'namely'. j. The shortened form of
'et cetera' is 'etc.', which means 'and other similar things'. No ellipsis
(¡K) should be used after it. k. Sentences should be separated
by a full stop (not a comma) or connected by a conjunction.
a. Apostrophes ( ' ) replace
letters in contracted forms. b. An apostrophe is used
to indicate the possessive form. c. Possessive adjectives
and pronouns do not have apostrophes. d. Apostrophes are used in
the plurals of letters, and sometimes of numbers.
a. A colon ( : ) usually
introduces an explanation or further details. b. A colon can introduce
a list. c. Colons are sometimes used
to introduce conversations.
Semi-colons ( ;) are sometimes
used instead of full stops, in cases where sentences are grammatically
independent but the meaning is closely connected.
a. compound nouns b. compound adjectives c. compound verbs beginning
with a noun d. prefixes e. numbers 21-99 and fractions |