Punctuation Exercises: Practice in Applying the Rules of Punctuation

This exercise will give you practice in using the end marks of punctuation: periods, question marks, and exclamation points.

After you have reviewed the article "End Punctuation: Periods, Question Marks, and Exclamation Points," try this short practice exercise. (The answers are on page two.)

This sentence-imitation exercise will give you practice in applying our Top Four Guidelines for Using Commas Effectively.

As a general rule, nonrestrictive words, phrases, and clauses are set off with commas. Test your punctuation prowess by completing this short exercise.

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.

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.

This exercise offers practice in using commas and semicolons correctly.

This exercise will give you practice in applying the principles introduced in Basic Rules of Punctuation, with special attention to the correct use of commas, colons, semicolons, and dashes.

This exercise will give you practice in applying some of the principles introduced in "Using Apostrophes Correctly."

This exercise will give you practice in applying the principles introduced in Guidelines for Using Apostrophes Correctly.

This exercise will give you practice in applying the first principle introduced in the article "Using Apostrophes Correctly": Use an apostrophe to show the omission of letters in a contraction.

It's time to find out how well you can apply the guidelines for using punctuation marks correctly and effectively.

This exercise will give you practice in applying our Guidelines for Using Quotation Marks Effectively (U.S. edition).