Punctuation
Commas
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” —Oscar Wilde
The humble comma can be a deceptively simple piece of punctuation. It is used to indicate a slight pause, shorter than a full stop, which does not end the sentence. Commas have a large number of different uses.
A comma can be used:
To finish a fronted adverbial or adverbial phrase:
Quickly, she went into the room.After a subordinate clause that begins a sentence:
Even though I was scared, I carried on.
To separate items in a list:
I bought: peas, sweetcorn and some haddock.At the end of dialogue if there is no other punctuation:
"I know," she said.To separate two adjectives that refer to the same noun:
The dark, spooky castle.When the first word of a sentence is 'yes' or 'no':
Yes, I agree with him.Around a parenthesis:
Emily, the girl from earlier, was not very nice.
Be careful! If you have two parts of a sentence joined together by a comma that would make perfect sense on their own, what you have is a comma splice! Try using a conjunction, a semicolon or a full stop instead.
Exclamation marks
“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.” —Mark Twain
Explanation marks are an alternative to a full stop that can be used in certain kinds of sentence.
Exclamation marks:
Exclamation marks show that something is dramatic, loud or said with force. Normally, you will find an exclamation mark in speech where it goes inside the speech marks. It replaces the comma at the end of the speech.
"Look over there!" she shouted.
"Oh no!" she screamed.
Exclamation marks are also used to point out something funny in text:
She went to find the sheep but they had already escaped
Speech marks
"I always have a quotation for everything—it saves original thinking." —Dorothy Sayers
Speech marks, sometimes called quotation marks or inverted commas are used to show what somebody said or to show that text has been taken from another source. In text, sometimes they look the same, but in writing they should look like small 66s (to open) and 99s (to close)
Speech marks only go around the actual words that are spoken, not around things like he said or she said (attributions).
"My favourite book is Mortal Engines," he said.
There always needs to be a piece of punctuation at the end of speech, before you close the speech marks. Normally, that is a comma but sometimes another piece of punctuation is more appropriate.
For example, if a question is being asked, it should end with a question mark and if something is shouted or said dramatically, an exclamation mark should be used.
"What are you doing?" she said.
"Look over there!" he shouted.
Sometimes, the attribution comes before the dialogue. In this case, use a comma or a colon after it and finish the dialogue with a full stop.
She said, "I think I'll go home now."
Normally, speech always begins with a capital letter. Rarely, a single sentence is split with an attribution in the middle. In this case, use a comma to close the first set of speech marks and a full stop (or exclamation/question mark) after the second set:
"I think," she said coldly, "that you should stop doing that now."
If you have multiple speakers, begin a new line for a new speaker:
"What's that?" I asked.
"That is the reason we came this far," he replied.
Question marks
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” —Bertrand Russell
Like an exclamation mark, a question mark is an alternative to the full stop that should be used for certain types of sentences.
Question marks:
A question mark indicates that a sentence is a question.
The question mark replaces the full stop so you don't need them both:
Where had they gone to?
Some questions expect an answer whilst others (rhetorical questions) are not intended to be answered:
Do you really want to be the last person in the world to read this book?
Be careful of indirect speech that looks like it's asking a question but is actually just reporting it. These do not need question marks:
She asked me whether there was a way back through the woods.
