CuteWriting

Let's have a revisit to the punctuation arena. Today's topic is exclamation marks and how to use them correctly. An exclamation mark is used to convey surprise, shout, awe, anger, or any such strong emotion. Please note that you should use it mostly in the conversational sort of writing and in dialogs. Here are some tips. 1. Don't use two exclamations or three together ever. 2. Use them as sparingly as possible especially in formal writing. 3. Don't use them with question marks (?!) 4. Don't use them in normal sentences, only on sentences which convey strong emotions in an informal fashion. Here are a few examples for you to follow. Wow, it's a lovely view! How irritable those kids are! She cried, "It's astounding!" Good heavens! "Ouch! It hurt" I didn't do that. I swear!

We have, in our punctuation help series, looked already at commas , colons , ellipsis , quotation marks , etc. Here, we will check out the uses of another punctuation mark, the semicolon (;) , and check out how it differs from other matching punctuations, the period and the comma. Introduction Semicolon is used to introduce a pause , slightly longer than the comma. It's not , however, a replacement for comma. Semicolons are usually applied on two occasions: To separate related sentences (independent clauses) and as a replacement for comma in monster lists. 1. Separating Independent Clauses Semicolons can be used a sentence separator . Independent clauses are independent sentences themselves; they have complete meaning. When writing two sentences, the usual separator is the period . However, you can use semicolon to replace this period, if the sentences are closely related. Look at the following sentence: Jack Nicholson is a great actor; he secured the Oscar award thrice. ...

When building your writing style , it is important to consider every aspect of it—grammar, punctuation, semantics, etc. Here we will look at a specific area, capitalization . We will see how to appropriately capitalize a word: where to use capital letters and where not to. Basic Rules of Capitalization 1. Capitalize the first word in a sentence. This is a general rule known to all people. We always begin a sentence with a capital letter. 2. Capitalize the pronoun, ‘I’: We always capitalize the pronoun, ‘I’. Always. It doesn’t matter where this word comes, but capitalize it. Jack and I were scolded by boss. 3. Capitalize proper nouns: Proper nouns include the names of people, countries, states, companies, brands, buildings, geographical features, rivers, mountains, etc. For instance: George and Hopkins became friends when they were working for Microsoft, New York . They once went to Egypt with their families, and visited the Nile . 4. Always capitalize the names of publ...

Many people confuse brackets ( [] ) with parentheses ( () ) and braces ( {} ) . This post is for them. I will explain where to use each, and where not to. 1. Parentheses Parentheses are an important construction in written language. They are encountered almost everywhere, and of course appears more often than the others of the family. All know the most important use of parentheses: to include what is really not part of a sentence, though you nonetheless want to. In this way, do neither start it with a capital nor end it with a period: I will meet John (who went to school with me). As seen above, the period should be part of the sentence and not the parenthesized element . However, if you are parenthesizing a whole sentence, the period also gets parenthesized just as any other punctuation to end the sentence. I will meet John. (I remember how great buddies we were in school.) The children were thrilled. (Bravo! We won!) Dashes find almost similar use as parentheses ; ...

When people omit certain words in written discourse, they tend to put periods at the place of the omitted word. Certain people make sentences like the following: “No, wait…..” he shouted. Ellipsis They tend to put several dots to describe some pause or omitted words, as in the above example. In English, however, a special punctuation mark is available to show this omission, the Ellipsis , so you don’t have to put too many dots to show it. The ellipsis is a series of three periods with spaces on both ends. The dots may or may not be spaced. “No, wait …” he shouted. Using Ellipsis Using ellipses to omit certain words is similar to Elliptical clauses (elliptical constructions) . Ellipses are used in intentional omission of words usually in reported conversation. It indicates an abeyance in speech, an incomplete thought, or a silence at the end of a sentence. Ellipses can end a sentence, as I mentioned before. In such case, the ellipsis together with the full stop will form four dots. He...

We have three types of dashes in use: The hyphen, En Dash, and the Em Dash. In this post, we will see how to use them all correctly. Hyphen (-) The hyphen is the minus key in Windows-based keyboards. This is a widely used punctuation mark. Hyphen should not be mistaken for a dash . Dash is different and has different function than a hyphen. A hyphen is used to separate the words in a compound adjective, verb, or adverb. For instance: The T-rex has a movement-based vision. My blog is blogger-powered. John’s idea was pooh-poohed. The hyphen can be used generally for all kinds of wordbreaks . En Dash (–) En Dash gets its name from its length. It is one ‘N’ long (En is a typographical unit that is almost as wide as 'N'). En Dash is used to express a range of values or a distance: People of age 55–80 are more prone to hypertension. Delhi–Sidney flight was late by three hours. In MS Word, you can put an En Dash either from the menu, clicking Insert->Symbol or by the key-combinatio...

Some time back, I had published two articles on punctuation , one on using commas correctly and another on using quotation marks and italics correctly . As I believe time is now high to come back to the topic, here is a post on using the colon correctly. Colon (:) is one of the oldest punctuation marks in use in English for more than four centuries. Here is where you will use a colon in written language. Shows What Follows The major use of a colon is to show you what follows after a related statement has been made. The colon in this regard attracts attention to a list of items or an explanation. For instance: During my holidays, I occasioned to pass through these places of interest: the Stonehenge, the Taj Mahal, and the Angkor Wat. Fast runners have a common motto: Take deep breath, focus on the target, and rush it. Separating Quotes We use the colon to separate any quote from an independent clause that introduces the quote. John’s deductions came out true, based ...

In this post, I am trying to generalize and contrast the rules of using quotation marks and italics correctly in written communication. Most of the time, these are interchangeable, and on certain occasions, this interchangeability causes confusion . So, the rules specify specific use for each of them, and it should be followed carefully in order to avoid confusion in meaning. Quotation Marks Use quotation marks whenever you report directly what another person said. This can be single quotation mark or double . The Americans usually use double while the British follow single quotation marks. Roger said, “I will be off for tomorrow.” Mike said, ‘Would you like to come with me for a ride?’ ‘I can’t come with you,’ Roger said, ‘as I have another business for tomorrow.’ Roger’s comment that he has ‘another business for tomorrow’ made Mike change his plans. Please note that when you begin a quotation, it should be with capital letter , just as you begin a sentence. But when a quot...

In my last article, I described how to use commas correctly . Here are some more tips, which will improve your punctuation. These tips give a standard to punctuate elements like etc., e.g., i.e., etc. As I said in the comma rules article, you should always have a comma after these elements: “Exempli gratia (e.g.),” Latin meaning for example “Id est (i.e.),” Latin meaning that is “Et cetera (etc.),” Latin meaning and so on All of these take a comma after the period . This should be followed, though so many occasions makes it difficult to follow the rule. Let’s analyze the exceptions. 1. When it ends a sentence, the appropriate punctuation is always a period (or exclamation mark or question mark according to the type of the sentence). Hence, you can’t obviously put a comma after etc when it ends a sentence. If you are using parenthetical elements, you normally put the element separated from the main sentence by commas. However, if you have yet another element, parenthesized within the...

Using the comma in a piece of writing is extremely confusing to most, most of the time. Also, it takes more rules than any other punctuation mark out there. The rules of using commas correctly in written discourse are as follows. The Rules of Commas 1. The most important and widely used separate items in a list of entries . For instance: Margaret, John, and Harry were present in the room when I reached. There is a comma used before and , it is known as Oxford comma owing to its promotion British English style more than in the American. It is a punctuation used to avoid confusion, though many writers still go without it. 2. Parenthetical elements , which may or may not be part of the sentence, but describes some external attribute of the subject, take comma in it. For instance: Johnny, who survived by chance, is still in comma. 3. Introductory phrases take comma afterward. Some of the introductory phrases begin with when, where, etc., use commas after them. When Johnny had the acciden...