SAT Punctuation Rules

Grammar questions account for approximately 50% of the questions on

ACT English and 25% of SAT Reading and Writing (give or take a few
percentage points)
Slide 1: Introduction
• Objective: Understand key punctuation rules for the SAT.
• Approach: Read sentences in context and identify relationships
between clauses.
Independent and Dependent Clauses
• Independent Clause: Can stand alone as a sentence.
• Dependent Clause: Cannot stand alone.
Ways to end a sentence
• Period(.)
My friend passed his IELTS test.

• Exclamation mark （！） ---excitement,strong feelings,emphasis

I got accepted to Harvard law!

• Question mark(? ）
• How do i get to the airport?
COMMA
• Separating sentence elements
1. It can separate elements of list
• All high school students need to take accounting,business studies,
commerce,
geography,chemistry,physics,economics,biology,intergrated
science,physical education,history, maths, english and a practical
subject.
DATES
• December 13, 2023
Separate independent clauses
• The weather was beautiful, so we decided to go for a hike.
Set off non-essential information
• My sister, a talented musician, plays the violin.
• The issue of global warming,however,continues to worsen.
 Semicolons;
• Connect closely related independent clauses
1. I enjoy playing the piano; my sister prefers the guitar.
Separate items in a series with internal
commas
• The team included players from New York, New York; Chicago, Illinois;
and Los Angeles, California.
Hold two main clauses together
• William Blake is a time-travelling alien, he has saved humanity
countless times.
• William Blake is a time-travelling alien; he has saved humanity
countless times.
1. Semicolons connect independent clauses.
• I used to love skiing; but now I prefer to stay at home and talk to my
cats.
• I used to love skiing, but now I prefer to stay at home and talk to my
cats.
• I used to love skiing; now I prefer to stay at home and talk to my cats.
 Colons:
• Introduce a list or explanation
• There are three things I love: reading, writing, and hiking.
Introduce a quote or example
• "She had one goal: to finish the marathon."
• Capitalization and Punctuation
• After placing the colon, follow a few simple rules to punctuate the
quote.
• * Rule 1: the colon should be followed immediately by quotation
marks.
• * Rule 2: the first letter in the quotation should be capitalized.
• * Rule 3: any punctuation at the end of the quotation should be inside
the quotation marks.
Which of the following sentences correctly
uses a colon to introduce the quotation?

• A. In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T.S. Eliot asks: "Do I dare
disturb the universe?"
• B. Eliot ends "The Hollow Men" with these haunting lines: "This is the
way the world ends; not with a bang, but with a whimper."
• C. The narrator of "Journey of the Magi" says: "I had seen birth and
death but had thought they were different."
Which of the following sentences is
incorrectly punctuated?
• A. "Love is like a virus," wrote Maya Angelou. "It can happen to
anyone at any time."
• B. As Maya Angelou said, "Nothing will work unless you do."
• C. Maya Angelou expressed her struggle like this, "There is no greater
agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
C.Maya Angelou expressed her struggle like this: "There is no greater
agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
Dashes and Hyphens
• Dashes (Em Dashes): Set off parenthetical statements
1) The concert—scheduled for next week—had to be postponed.
2) While i was on my way to her place-i bumped into my crush- and we
wound up going on a date.
Hyphens: Connect words in compound
constructions.
• The well-known author received an award.
• He promised to buy her a Valentines present but he showed up
empty-handed.
• The Duchess of Sussex, Meagan Markle, does not have a good
relationship with her mother-in-law.
 Apostrophes’
• Contractions and possession
• It's a beautiful day."
• The cat's toy is on the shelf.
 Quotation Marks
• Direct speech or enclosing titles
• She said, "I'll be there by 3 o'clock."
• I read the article "The Power of Habit."
• Punctuation (including type and placement)
• Verb tense and form
• Pronouns
• Prepositions
• Idiomatic phrases and words