Articles Index
Punctuation Practice: Using End Marks of Punctuation
After you have reviewed "End Punctuation: Periods, Question Marks, and Exclamation Points," try this short exercise.
Review Exercise: Punctuating Sentences Correctly
It's time to find out how well you can apply the guidelines for using punctuation marks correctly and effectively.
Punctuation Practice: Lost in the Witchcrafted Woods
This exercise offers practice in applying the guidelines for using punctuation marks. In the following paragraph, insert commas, quotation marks, colons, and dashes wherever you think they belong.
Basic Rules of Punctuation
Understanding the principles behind the common marks of punctuation should strengthen our understanding of grammar and help us to use the marks consistently in our own writing. Here we'll review the conventional uses of punctuation in American English.
The Punctuation Poem: "The Dictaphone Bard" by Franklin P. Adams
By demonstrating how a 19th-century poem might look after being played back through a Dictaphone (an early voice-recording device), Franklin P. Adams highlights (to the point of distraction) the usually unobtrusive marks of punctuation.
Review Exercise: Adding Commas to a Paragraph
This exercise offers practice in applying the rules for using commas effectively. Insert commas wherever you think they belong in the paragraph "The Least Successful Car." Try reading the paragraph aloud: at least in some cases, you should be able to hear where commas are needed.
Review Exercise: Adding Commas to a Paragraph II
Insert commas wherever you think they belong in the paragraph "Frederick Douglass." Try reading the paragraph aloud: at least in some cases, you should be able to hear where commas are needed.
State Abbreviations
A table of the postal (or ZIP code) abbreviations for all 50 states along with their older (or traditional) abbreviations.
Semicolons, Colons, and Dashes
No intestinal jokes here, please. We're talking about three much-abused marks of punctuation.
Creating Sentences With Commas
This sentence-imitation exercise will give you practice in applying our Top Four Guidelines for Using Commas Effectively.
Creating Sentences With Semicolons, Colons, and Dashes
This sentence-imitation exercise will give you practice in applying our guidelines for using Semicolons, Colons, and Dashes.
How to Use the Semicolon
Stronger than a comma, less forceful than a period (or full stop): put simply, that's the nature of the semicolon. It's a mark, Lewis Thomas says, that offers "a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come." Here we'll consider the main uses of the semicolon.
Punctuation Matters: A "Dear John" Letter and a Two Million Dollar Comma
So, instant messengers, do you still think that punctuation is unimportant--that commas, colons, and similar squiggles are just pesky reminders of a bygone era? If so, here are two short stories that may change your mind.
Please, Don't "Quote" Me
A look at the proliferation of quotation marks in some unexpected places.
Apostrophe Exercise: Combining Sentences with Possessive Nouns
This exercise will give you practice in applying some of the principles introduced in "Using Apostrophes Correctly."