Punctuation Marks
Punctuation Marks :
Read this sign that was put up just in front of a school.
SLOW CHILDREN CROSSING
The person who put up the notice, no doubt, wanted to warn the vehicles to go slowly because children would cross the street in front of the school. But since he did not put a comma after the word ‘slow’, the sign seems to say that the children who are crossing are slow!
Punctuation, thus, is very important to convey the right meaning. What is punctuation?
Punctuation is a set of symbols used in writing to help indicate something about the structure of sentences or to assist readers in knowing when to change the rhythm or the stress of their speaking.
Depending on the style of writing and the language used, punctuation may tend towards one of these purposes more than the other. Common units of punctuation in English and many other languages include the comma, period (full stop), apostrophe, quotation mark, question mark, exclamation mark, bracket, dash, hyphen, ellipsis, colon and semicolon. Each of these units indicates a different thing and some may have multiple meanings depending on context.
It is important for us to know the correct usage of each of these punctuation marks.
Related Pages :
- Full Stops
- Periods
- Question Marks
- Exclamation Marks
- End Punctuation
- Capital Letters
- Commas
- Semicolons and Colons
- Semicolons
- Colons
- Quotation Marks
Punctuation Marks
The Sentences Index
