The sentence and the full stop
The full stop is the most important punctuation mark. It shows the end of the sentence. The English language also uses capital letters at the beginning of sentences.
For example:
The first schools in what is now British Columbia were established by the Hudson's Bay Company in about 1853 on Vancouver Island. The present public school system originated with the Public School Act of 1872. Education is free and compulsory for children ages 7 to 15. Schools are funded by the provincial government and local property taxes. The province's 75 school districts are administered by locally elected boards.
The comma is the most important punctuation mark after the full stop. Its main use is for separating parts of sentences. Commas function in five main ways:
1. Before or after adverbial clauses and groups.
a. Recently, the number of service enterprises in wealthier free-market economies has grown rapidly.
b. To visit his brother, he drove through the night.
c. After dinner, he walked around the town.
d. Although it might seem highly unlikely, there are considerable similarities between the male and female body.
e. Similar feelings influenced middle-class shareholders and directors, too.
f. When the activity of our kidneys is considered, a bed-time drink does not waken us by filling our bladders during the night.
g. Some businesses only seek to earn enough to cover their operating costs, however.
h. Because stocks are generally negotiable, stockholders have the right to assign or transfer their shares to another individual.
2. Before various connectives to join two independent clauses. (and, but, or, so nor, for yet)
a. The house badly needed painting, and the roof needed repairing.
b. A loose stretch would wrinkle too easily with successive washes, or might even wrinkle on a damp day.
c. There was no Canadian Consulate in Paris at that time, so we had to go to the American Consulate for ours.
3. To separate some non-defining phrases from the rest of the sentence.
a. Mr Clinton, the President, said that he would give his full support to the proposal.
b. The Conservatives, who had gained more votes than Labour in the 1929 general election, were only the second largest party.
c. The chairman, getting to his feet, began to describe his plans.
d. The opposition parties, however, were unwilling to accept any programme of economies which did not involve a cut in the standard rate of benefit.
4. To separate words, groups and clauses in a series.
a. Many U.S. firms attempt to tap emerging markets by pursuing business in China, India, Latin America, and Russia and other Eastern European countries.
b. A policeman has to be able to work at night, at weekends and on holidays.
c. The industrial power generator, electronics, and appliance manufacturer Westinghouse Electric Corporation purchased media production company CBS Inc.
5. To separate adjectives that separately modify the same noun.
a. Critics praise the novel's unaffected, unadorned style.
b. It was conceived of by all those who participated in it as a temporary, emergency government.
c. He walked with long, slow, steady, deliberate strides.
Common mistakes
1. A comma cannot separate subject from predicate. The following sentences are not possible:
a. A man of his great abilities, would always be successful.
b. The number of service enterprises in wealthier free-market economies, has grown rapidly.
c. Only occupants of the deep oceans or the darkest recesses of caves, will escape such rhythmic influences.
d. Experience indicates that, these rhythms do not result wholly from our life-style.
2. A comma cannot be used to join grammatically separate sentences. The following sentences are not possible:
a. London is a very cosmopolitan city, there are people from many culture living there.
b. Learning a new language is like learning to swim, it takes a lot of practice.
c. Students in Higher Education face many problems, for example, they have to cope with a new culture.
Try this exercise:
Add commas wherever necessary. Name the function of each comma.
a) Advertising is the collective term for public announcements designed to promote the sale of specific commodities or services.
b) Advertising is a form of mass selling and it is employed when the use of direct person-to-person selling is impractical impossible or simply inefficient.
c) It is to be distinguished from other activities intended to persuade the public such as propaganda publicity and public relations.
d) In the U.S. alone in the late 1980s approximately $120 billion was spent in a single year on advertising to influence the purchase of commodities and services.
e) Advertising falls into two main categories: consumer advertising directed to the ultimate purchaser and trade advertising in which the appeal is made to dealers through trade journals and other media.
The apostrophe has two main functions in English, but only one in academic writing. It is used mainly to show possession or relationship. It is also used in informal writing to show contraction or letters left out.
Possession or relationship
The apostrophe precedes the 's' in singular words and plurals that do not end in 's'. It follows the 's' in plurals that end in 's'. The apostrophe is not used with the possessive pronouns 'hers', 'yours', 'theirs' and 'its'.
For example:
a. The province's 75 school districts are administered by locally elected boards.
b. Modern estimates of England's total population vary between 1 and 3 million.
c. Two years earlier, The Economist had described gambling, as Britain's second biggest industry.
d. In contrast to the all-inclusiveness of other countries' socialised medical services, 40m Americans have no coverage at all.
Try this exercise:
a) Astronomers theorize that the 55 Cancri planets formed from a disk of dust around their star, the same way planets formed in the earths solar system.
b) When a planet pulls 55 Cancri away from the earth, the stars light appears to redden slightly. The stars light becomes slightly bluer when a planet pulls the star toward the earth.
c) 3Ms founders originally planned to mine and sell corundum, a high-quality abrasive mineral used to manufacture grinding wheels.
d) 3M sales representatives began bypassing their clients purchasing agents and dealing directly with plant workers. The companys first major breakthroughs in product development grew out of this strategy.
In academic writing, quotation marks are used to show that you are quoting directly from another author's work. The quotation marks should enclose the actual words of the author and all bibliographical information must be given.
For example:
a. Hillocks (1986) similarly reviews dozens of research findings. He writes, " The available research suggests that teaching by written comment on compositions is generally ineffective" (p. 167).
b. For example, McCawley stated in 1968, " ... a full account of English syntax requires a fairly full account of semantics to just as great an extent as the converse is true" (p. 161).
c. Hatch (1978, p. 104) wonders whether a more accurate portrayal might be that the learner " learns how to do conversation, how to interact verbally and out of this interaction syntactic structures are developed"
Note the punctuation before the quotation marks:
a. When a reporting verb is used to introduce the quotation, a comma is used.
He stated, " The 'placebo effect,' ... disappeared when behaviours were studied in this manner" (Smith, 1982, p. 276), but he did not clarify which behaviours were studied.
b. When the quotation is integrated into the structure of your sentence, no punctuation is used.
Richterich and Chancerel (1980, p. 5) maintain that " assessment should be an integral part of the learning material" .
c. When the quotation is independent of the structure of the main sentence, a colon is used.
Miele (1993, p. 276) found the following: " The placebo effect ... disappeared when behaviors were studied in this manner" .
Holmes & Stubbe (2003) noted the following:
Humour typically constructs participants as equals, emphasising what they have in common and playing down power differences.
Try this exercise:
Add punctuation marks to the following texts.
The words that should be quoted are highlighted:
a) Attitudes are here taken in the meaning advocated by Sarnoff (1970) a disposition to react favourably or unfavourably to a class of objects (p. 179).
b) In a recent survey, Berwick & Ross (1989) found that the overall intensity of motivation of the studnets was low (p. 206).
c) Shaw (1983, p. 24) had similar results, leading him to say the students are not learning English so they can change themselves and become like native speakers.
d) Morrow (1987, p. 58) has taken the view that the development of the reading skill in English may well be the most urgent need of the majority of Japaneses learners. He continues
On theother hand, with the spread of English as an international language, there is an increasing number of Japanese businessmen, scientists and scholars from many disciplines who need to use English not only to communicate with English speakers, but also to communicate with other non-native English speakers who use English for international communication. For this group, the acquisition of speaking and listening skills is vital. (p. 58)
Colons are used to add extra information after a clause. This can be divided into three main categories.
1. Lists
A colon can introduce a list.
a. We need three kinds of support: economic, moral and political.
b. The Labour government found itself under pressure from three directions: from the left wing, from the TUC, and from Sir Oswald Mosley and his supporters.
2. Explanations
A colon can be used before an explanation.
a. We decided not to go on holiday: we had too little money.
b. It was conceived of by all those who participated in it as a temporary, emergency government, formed for a single limited purpose: to balance the budget through drastic economies and increases in taxation.
c. It was something very rarely seen in Britain, or in other democracies: an emergency government.
3. Quotations
A colon is used before a quotation when the quotation is independent of the structure of the main sentence.
Miele (1993, p. 276) found the following: " The placebo effect ... disappeared when behaviors were studied in this manner."
Note
Do not use a colon directly after a verb or a preposition that introduces the list, explanation or quotation.
Try this exercise:
Add colons to the following texts and explain their use:
a) It was conceived of by all those who participated in it not as a coalition government as generally understood, but as a temporary, emergency government, formed for a single limited purpose to balance the budget through drastic economies and increases in taxation.
b) The Labour government found itself under pressure from three directions from the left wing, from the TUC, and from Sir Oswald Mosley and his supporters.
c) Only the United States had no state airline, and believed that airways should be open to free market capitalism "In general, the Chicago conference can be described as an attempt by the United States to capitalise on its overwhelmingly strong bargaining position in international aviation by securing for itself a near monopoly of long-haul air transport."
Semi-Colons have two main uses in academic writing.
1. To separate closely-related sentences
A semi-colon can be used to separate two sentences which could be written as independent sentences but are very closely related in meaning.
a. A thorough and detailed biography of Arthur Henderson is also badly needed; the recent short studies by F. M. Leventhal and Chris Wrigley add little in so far as the events of 1931 are concerned.
b. Clearly, as the concentration of P rises, so will the proportion of enzyme molecules to which P is bound; hence the rate of conversion of S to A, and thence to P, will fall.
In both cases a full stop would be acceptable. A comma would not.
2. Complicated Lists
A semi-colon can also be used to separate items in lists, especially if the items are long and complicated and already contain commas.
a. Labour was the largest party with 288 MPs; the Conservatives, who had gained more votes than Labour in the 1929 general election, were, nevertheless, only the second largest party with, by 1931, 262 MPs; and the Liberals had fifty-nine MPs.
b. Latin literature continued to be copied by Christian aristocrats; classical learning survived in the teaching available, now in episcopal households rather than public schools;Roman art continued to adorn the walls of churches and the sides of sarcophagi.
Capital letters have two main uses in English: they are used at the beginning of sentences and for proper names.
1. At the beginning of a sentence
If football was a business, it was a very peculiar one. Clubs did not compete with one another to attract larger crowds by reducing their prices. Nor did they make any serious efforts to derive income from a huge fixed asset, which was used for only a few hours a week.
2. Proper names
a. Personal names: John, Ms Smith, Dr Brown, Mr Gates, Elizabeth,
b. Titles: Mr, Ms, Dr, Colonel, Professor, President, Prime Minister, Judge
c. Geographical names: Argentinian, Europe, China, Mount Everest, Lake Michigan Skye, Borneo, London, Bangkok, the River Thames, the Pacific Ocean, the Panama Canal, Baker Street, Cambridge Road, Raffles Hotel, St George's Hall
d. Company/Organisation names: Shell, Woolworths, Microsoft, Boots, World Trade Organisation, World Health Organisation, Federal Trade Commission, British Broadcasting Corporation
e. University/School names: Oxford University, University of Hertfordshire, Royal College of Music
f. Religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Islam
g. Days, months, festivals - but not seasons: Monday, July, Christmas, summer,
h. Magazines: Newsweek, Vogue, The Times, New Scientist
i. Languages: English, Hindi
j. Nationalities: English, French, Spanish, Japanese, American
Try this exercise:
Add the capital letters to the following texts:
solicitors for edward connelly have also obtained leave to hear negligence claims against cape (formerly the cape asbestos company) in the uk, and thor chemicals holdings. the cape case involves three south african and four italian employees who contracted asbestos-related cancer after working at two south african subsidiaries. in 1997, thor paid �1.3 million to 20 south african employees who suffered mercury poisoning from an unsafe chemical process, while a further 21 claims against the company are pending.
Answers
v The Comma
a) Advertising is the collective term for public announcements designed to promote the sale of specific commodities or services.
b) Advertising is a form of mass selling, and it is employed (2)
when the use of direct, person-to-person, selling is (5)
impractical, impossible, or simply inefficient. (4)
c) It is to be distinguished from other activities intended to persuade the public, such as (1)
propaganda, publicity, and public relations. (4)
d) In the U.S. alone in the late 1980s, approximately $120 billion was spent in a single year on advertising to influence the purchase of commodities and services. (1)
e) Advertising falls into two main categories: consumer advertising, directed to the ultimate purchaser, and trade advertising, in which the appeal is made to dealers through trade journals and other media. (3)
v The Apostrophe
a) Astronomers theorize that the 55 Cancri planets formed from a disk of dust around their star, the same way planets formed in the earth's solar system.
b) When a planet pulls 55 Cancri away from the earth, the star's light appears to redden slightly. The star's light becomes slightly bluer when a planet pulls the star toward the earth.
c) 3M's founders originally planned to mine and sell corundum, a high-quality abrasive mineral used to manufacture grinding wheels.
d) 3M sales representatives began bypassing their clients' purchasing agents and dealing directly with plant workers. The company's first major breakthroughs in product development grew out of this strategy.
v Quotation Marks
a) Attitudes are here taken in the meaning advocated by Sarnoff (1970): " a disposition to react favourably or unfavourably to a class of objects" (p, 179).
b) In a recent survey, Berwick & Ross (1989) found that "the overall intensity of motivation of the studnets was low" (p. 206).
c) Shaw (1983, p. 24) had similar results, leading him to say, "the students are not learning English so they can change themselves and become like native speakers".
d) Morrow (1987, p. 58) has taken the view that the development of the reading skill in English may well be "the most urgent need of the majority of Japaneses learners". He continues:
On the other hand, with the spread of English as an international language, there is an increasing number of Japanese businessmen, scientists and scholars from many disciplines who need to use English not only to communicate with English speakers, but also to communicate with other non-native English speakers who use English for international communication. For this group, the acquisition of speaking and listening skills is vital. (p. 58)
v Colon
a) It was conceived of by all those who participated in it not as a coalition government as generally understood, but as a temporary, emergency government, formed for a single limited purpose: to balance the budget through drastic economies and increases in taxation. (explanation)
b) The Labour government found itself under pressure from three directions: from the left wing, from the TUC, and from Sir Oswald Mosley and his supporters. (list)
c) Only the United States had no state airline, and believed that airways should be open to free market capitalism: "In general, the Chicago conference can be described as an attempt by the United States to capitalise on its overwhelmingly strong bargaining position in international aviation by securing for itself a near monopoly of long-haul air transport." (Quotation)
v Capital Letter
Solicitors for Edward Connelly have also obtained leave to hear negligence claims against Cape (formerly the Cape Asbestos Company) in the UK, and Thor Chemicals Holdings. TheCape case involves three South African and four Italian employees who contracted asbestos-related cancer after working at two South African subsidiaries. In 1997, Thor paid �1.3 million to 20 South African employees who suffered mercury poisoning from an unsafe chemical process, while a further 21 claims against the company are pending.
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