PUNCTUATION (formerly sometimes called pointing) – are marks used in writing to separate

sentences and their elements and to clarify meaning.

Here are some examples of Punctuation:

 Period – It tells you when the sentence is complete and you can take breath.
 Apostrophe – Show the omission of one or more letters in a contraction and to show
ownership or possession.
 Quotation Mark – Indicate exact words or the titles of short work.
 Comma – Inserting pauses into sentences and breaking them up into manageable chunks.
 Parenthesis – Are used to set off extra or incidental info from the rest of a sentence.
 Semi-Colon – Used to merge two independent clauses.
 Colon – Commonly used to introduce and can be used to introduce anything: words,
phrases, list, names or quotations.
 Exclamation Mark – Used to add a air of emotion to a sentence.
 Question Mark – It has an amazing ability to completely change the meaning of a sentence
simply by appearing at its close.
 Hyphens – Used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word.
 Dashes – There are two types of dashes: the En Dash and the Em Dash.
En Dash –used to express a range of values or distance.
Em Dash- it is used in a similar fashion to the parenthesis: to indicate added emphasis,
an interruption or an immediate change of thought.
 Braces –Used to put parenthesis within parenthesis.
 Slash – Used to distinguish between two terms such as ‘’he/she’’. They can also used in
abbreviations.
Subject-verb Agreement - The correspondence in number between the subject and the verb of
a sentence; plural subjects take plural verbs and singular subjects take singular verbs.

Words between Subject and Verb – Words that come between the subject and the verb do not
change subject-verb agreement.

Example:

The sharp fangs in the dog’s moth look scary.

Verb before Subject – A verb agrees with its subject even when the verb comes before the
subject. Words that may precede the subject include there, here, and, inquestion, who, which,
what and where.

Example:

There are wild dogs in our neighborhood.

Compound Subject – A two subjects separated by a joining word, such as and, Subjects joined
by and generally take a plural verb.

Example:

Clark and Lois are a contented couple.

and when subjects are joined by either…or, neither…nor, not only…but also, the verb agrees
with the subject closer to the verb.
Example:

Neither the negotiator nor the union leaders want the strike to continue.

Indefinite Pronoun – Can pose special problems in subject-verb agreement.

The difficulty is that some indefinite pronouns sound plural when they are really singular.

Example of Indefinite

(Singular)

Either Anyone Something Nobody

Neither Anything Everybody No one
Other Somebody Everyone Nothing
Anybody Someone everything Each

(Plural)

Both Few Many Several Others

-END-

THANK YOU!!

GROUP 3