Punctuation, Part 2

In this blog post I will be selecting three more topics of the "Punctuation" section in Rules for Writers. I will be briefly discussing what I learned from the chapters.

Horlan Varlan, "Punctuation Puzzle Pieces", taken on October 23rd, 2008 via Flickr Attribution Generic 2.0

The comma: One thing that really interested me about commas that I never really knew what that they are used for the purpose of helping the reader. It breaks up sentences so they are more readable and comprehend-able to readers. This will be helpful for me when I can't decide whether to use a comma or not. I've also always had confusion on if the second to last item in a series(the one before the word "and") needed a comma and this section cleared that confusion up(you do need to put on in).

Quotations: I have been pretty familiar with quotations but the only thing I was not familiar with was when to place punctuation in the quotations and when to place it on the outside. What I learned was that periods and commas go inside the quotation marks. Colons and Semi colons go on the outside of the quotation marks, question marks and exclamation points go inside the exclamation points. This is important information I will use as I often use quotations.

End punctuation: I have always been certain of what end punctuation to use when ending a sentence. What I did learn from this section was end punctuation in abbreviations. When ending a sentence with an abbreviation, it is important to only use the same period in the abbreviation to end the sentence. One thing I also found interesting was that if a "polite request" is written in the form of a question that it can be ended with a period.

Reflection: While revising my essay in regards to these three topics I realized that I did a fairly good job in regards to punctuation. An example in which I correctly quoted was < “I agree that learning how to use many productivity, editing, collaborating, communicating and coding tools would be valuable across the curriculum. But early elementary students’ primary needs are literacy and numeracy.” said Schwartze. > I correctly placed the period in the quotation. A place where I could use a comma and didn't was <and comprehension schools would find it nearly impossible to add in computer science. Especially when the objective is to make computer science extremely important in the curriculum>. I should place a comma before "especially." This exercise helped me realize that when writing an essay you are bound to make punctuation mistakes and should make sure to correct them in the revision stage.