Punctuation

Punctuation  (periods, commas, and whatnot) can be very confusing.  Probably 75% of all native English speakers graduate from high school without really understanding the rules of punctuation and breaking quite of few them, too.  For better or for worse, native speakers tend to rely on how a sentence sounds or looks to help them punctuate it.  Sometimes this words and sometimes it doesn’t.  If you are not a native speaker, however, and even if you are, the only real way to know where to put what is to learn the rules.

And that's the hard part, isn't it?  Because the tricky thing about rules is that learning rules usually takes time.  It can also be overwhelming and tiring.  Stepping into the rough world of learning rules, it's easy to say, "Oh my gosh, this is too big and hard and I'm tired and I knew I could never learn this stuff anyway.  I quit."

Don't do that!  Don't try to learn it all at once or tell yourself it's impossible.

Think of it as building a house.

If you are going to build a house you cannot just stand in your yard and say, “Presto Chango, I build a house now!”  You must have a plan and some tools and you must learn to use the tools and you must learn to do a lot of things.  This will take time.  This is good.  And in between working on the house you will take breaks.  You will drink water or soda or coffee or tea or who knows what else and maybe even eat something.  This is good, too.  Do the same thing when you are learning the rules for punctuation.  Take your time.  Go slowly.  Pretend you are a ketchup bottle.  And take some breaks.  Forget about it all for a while as you stare out the window or listen to music.  Then come back and practice a little or read some more or just think about it.  Slowly you learn things.  Slowly you will get better and better and soon will find yourself explaining the rules of punctuation to all of your friends and neighbors and co-workers and when someone has a letter to write they will come to YOU because YOU know punctuation better than anyone else!

Here we go.

1. Clauses

The first thing you have to understand in order to understand the rules of punctuation where commas and periods are concerned are claus

A clause is a group of words that has a subject and a verb.

Example:  The girl sings.

Sings – that’s the verb.  (Let’s review verbs – they’re words that describe action, including the action of being, so that means the verb “to be” – like is and are and was, etc., also.)

Girl – that’s the subject.  (What’s a subject?  That’s what you’re talking or writing about.  It’s the subject of discussion.  It’s a person, place or thing.  It’s a noun)

Here are some more examples:

The boy dances.  (Subject:  boy   Verb:  dances)
The movie ends.  (Subject:  movie   Verb:  ends)

Words that come after a preposition don’t count as anything when you are dealing with clauses.   (Let’s review prepositions:  they are little words that tell you things like where and when.  Examples:  of, in, on, at, near, by, etc.)

Let’s take a look at an example of that.

The boy in the car sings.       “In” is a preposition do “the car” can’t be the subject or the verb.  It’s just extra information that tells something about the boy.  (It tells us the boy is in the car.)  “Boy” is the subject.  “Sings” is the verb.

Exercise 1
Let’s practice.  Read the following sentences and find the subject and the verb. 

1. The woman in the blue dress laughs.
2. The old horse walks down the road.
3. The new computer works great.
4. The little dog jumped over the big cat.
5. The purse under the table is mine.


(Now might be a good time to take a little break if you are feeling overwhelmed or just tired.  After you’ve taken a break, come back and read the first part again.  Ask yourself if you really understand it.  Look at some sentences in a book or a newspaper and locate the subject and verb.  When you feel ready, move on to section 2.  DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU ARE TIRED OR OVERWHELMED!)

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On to Section 2