Let's talk about punctuation!

Welcome to another Clive's English Corner post!

Today's grammar point is:

Punctuation

For ESL learners punctuation can be quite puzzling because rules might be slightly different in your native language, but the rules in English are actually quite clear cut. Today, let’s focus on two of the most important ones and some of their use cases.

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Period or Full stop(.)

This is one of the easiest signs to use. It is necessary for ending a sentence or paragraph. As a side note, the same symbol might be named differently depending on the context or topic that it is being used.

. Point (numbers) It is called “point” when we are discussing figures. For example, “it went up five point five percent.”

. Dot (internet/visual context) This is an obvious case because you most likely have heard this when someone provided an email address, “my email is johndoe-at(@)-server-dot-com”. Also, when someone discusses a painting and sees “colored dots”, or when a girl wears a "polka-dot" dress.

Comma(,)

It is safe to say that it is a very important punctuation sign, but it can easily be misused and overused. However, if you stick to the most common uses, you should be able to avoid comma splices.

Use commas to separate items in a series. Also, do not forget to include an “oxford comma” before “and” and the last item in the series. This will prevent readers to get confused. For instance, it is not the same to say: “I like pizza, burgers, and mac and cheese”, than to say: “I like pizza, burgers and mac and cheese”. The first sentence separates “burgers” from “mac and cheese” whereas the second one just slaps them together.
When you want to write two complete ideas(independent clauses) that are related, together, use a comma before coordinate conjunctions(“for”, “and”, “nor”, “but”, “or”, “yet”, and “so”). Some simple example sentences could be:

I like pizza a lot, but I do not like lasagna.
Maria plays tennis, and she likes English.

In this use case, we employ a comma to separate an independent clause of a dependent clause. You can recognize a dependent clause easily because it cannot communicate an idea by itself, and it starts with words such as: if, unless, although, though, when, while, because, due to, etc. It is important to note that the comma will be used only if the first sentence is the dependent clause; otherwise, the comma will not be necessary. Let’s look at some examples:

If Maria plays tennis today, she won’t play volleyball.
Although the weather was great, we did not go to the beach.

Whenever you want to provide some extra information about the subject of the sentence, you can use a comma before and after the description of the noun(adjective clause). For instance:

The New York times, one of the biggest news publications in the USA, make mistakes in their stories from time to time.

That is all for now! Focus on mastering these punctuation signs. Remember to practice these rules by writing your own sentences and paragraphs, and you will find yourself using them effortlessly and accurately.

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