Punctuation Rules

The very importance of punctuation marks is that they give the intended meaning to the sentences. The practice of stressing and pausing while speaking entirely changes the emotion behind your words. Similarly, there is a need to do the same while writing as well. In this section, we will look at:

• The importance of punctuation marks
• How punctuation marks can help change the meaning of sentences
• The way punctuation marks better the grammar and sentence formation

A lot of people hate using punctuation marks. It is mainly because they are unaware of the reason why they are used. Apart from the basic punctuation marks like the periods and question marks, people are generally not fully aware of the need to use punctuation marks in a sentence. Most of the people feel that using punctuation marks lessen the beauty of sentences, but, in reality, it enhances the readability and conveys the right meaning to the reader.

The best way to get familiar with punctuations is by considering punctuations as a ‘friend’. A friend that helps you make your point clear to the reader by conveying proper meaning using grammatically correct sentences.According to The Penguin Guide to Punctuation, “The problem with poor punctuation is that it makes life difficult for the reader who needs to read and understand what you’ve written.”

Example:

Let us look at how using punctuation marks can change the meanings of sentences:

For example, the sentence:

ive lost my key can you find it for me

Here, many things like a capital letter, apostrophe, a question mark/ exclamation mark etc are missing. The correct sentence would look like:

I’ve lost my key. Can you find it for me?

This is just a basic example of what punctuation marks can do to a sentence. There is a need for everyone to go in depth to understand the advanced or proper usage of punctuation marks.