Example: Yeah, I’m sure she’s “too sick” to come to work. To indicate that the writer is using a term ironically.Example: According to Mark Twain, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Novelists use quotation marks for dialogue, and journalists use quotation marks when they quote experts or historical figures. There are several reasons to employ quotation marks, but here are the most common: Quotation marks are for more than just quotes. Example: How many s’s are in Mississippi? To show that a letter has been omitted.Example: Jessica’s family is from Michigan. The em dash is twice the length of the en dash and is stylistically used in place of other punctuation for emphasis.Įxample: There’s only one thing I love more than writing - traveling!Īpostrophes, quotation marks, and ellipsis don’t fit neatly into our other categories, but they deserve a mention. The en dash indicates ranges.Įxample: Construction lasted from 2001-2005. Dash (-)ĭashes can be separated into two categories: the en dash and the em dash. The hyphen is used to make compound words out of multiple single words.Įxample: I love writing multiple articles back-to-back. Hyphens and dashes look alike but serve different purposes. Brackets īrackets are often used to clarify who a pronoun is referring to when the reader can’t be entirely certain.Įxample: She teaches third grade at Lincoln. Interesting side note: You can also use a set of commas in place of each parenthesis. My sister, who grew up in Los Angeles, has no idea how to deal with the Illinois winters. Parentheses are used when your thought requires a bit of expansion to be better understood.Įxample: My sister (who grew up in Los Angeles) has no idea how to deal with the Illinois winters. When you need to elaborate on a thought or clarify your meaning, you need punctuation to encase your little sojourn in your explanation. This is similar to using a coordinating conjunction to join two complete sentences into one, but it allows you to drop the conjunction completely.Įxample (a semicolon twist on our earlier comma example): Carlos is prompt he always completes work ahead of the deadline. Semicolon ( )Ī semicolon joins two complete sentences into one sentence. The primary use of a colon in American punctuation is to introduce a list.Įxample: The project has four phases: planning, development, testing, and delivery. Example: While I was on vacation, Sarah filled in.
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