Punctuation – The Afterparty

For those of you who are hardcore grammarians, lasting until the last hours of the day pondering on the extensive and elusive forms of punctuation.
I bring you – The Afterparty.
Here is the summary of punctuation marks I want to explore today:
()
[]
‘
:
;

Hopefully you recognise most in the list, and if you don’t, you will by the end of this blog post!
I’ll start with the round brackets, also known as parentheses, these are used extensively in maths but are also very necessary to the English language. You can use them to:

• Add any extra information to a sentence. For example, “The athlete has been involved in many projects (whilst recovering from an injury)“
• To indicate singular/plurals. For example, “Enter your name(s) here…”

Square brackets are used in different contextual and syntactical situations as well. You can find them:

• Within quotes in a text, to add more contextual information to an uninformed reader. For example, “They [the girls] claimedthey were at the shop at the time of the murder”
• Surrounding an ellipsis in a quote, the ellipsis in this context is displayed to represent the omission of a part of the quote. For example, “The government, including all local subsidiaries, has recently enforced new legislation” -> “The government […] enforced new legislation”. Techniques such as this are used when only the most important information is needed and there is a word/space limit, like in journalism.

You can have ellipsis without square brackets within a sentence, in this context it is used to show a pause or uncertainty in the speaker’s conviction, for example “When did we all become so… defeated?”

Apostrophes have many important uses within the English language concerning plurals and possession of nouns. You will use them to:

• Show a contraction (which is the shortening of a word or syllable through the omission of letters that represent sounds), so a well-known contraction which seems to be the scorn of the Internet is “you‘re”. Here, the full representation is “you are”, even though many still use it in the wrong context of “your”…
• Indicate possession (interestingly, there is an entire case devoted to this but we do not make use of it morphologically in English – it is the genitive case), for single nouns usually we just add an apostrophe and “s” e.g “the woman and her hat” -> “the woman‘s hat”.
• For nouns already ending in “-s”, there are different methods you can use: either only adding an apostrophe to all, or for common nouns adding an apostrophe and “s”, and for proper nouns only adding an apostrophe. It is recommended to pick one, and stick to it.

1. “Jones” -> “Jones‘“
2. “class” -> “class‘s” in “the class‘s schedules” (NOT the sames as “classes”)

“Hastings” -> “Hastings‘“

• To indicate plural possession – so “the guys on a night out” becomes “the guys‘ night out” (putting the apostrophe the other way round would only indicate one guy in this context “the guy‘s night out”)

There are many other specific rules for the apostrophe but utilising these simple points will get you far on your way of mastering English punctuation!

Colons are not apart of your digestive system, no, but they are very useful withing modern English. You will use them to:

• Indicate a list – as above.
• To introduce a quotation, or direct speech (depending on the type of text it is), for example “The magazine wrote: …”
• Between two main clauses, where the second directly follows from the first. For example, “That is the secret of my extraordinary life: always do the unexpected.” 

Finally, we have semi-colons, which are no lesser than colons, but are used slightly differently. You can find them in:

• Sentences that need a bigger break than a comma, but not as final as a full-stop.
• Sentences that are made up of more than one main clauses, these can be joined together through a semi-colon. For example, “We stood on the pier as we ate; the seagulls hovered above like predators”
• Contexts that have already used many commas.

So, that is it for our Afterparty, I hope you get home okay. Mind the step as you leave, and please try to not wake the neighbours.

If you have any further questions/remarks, feel free to contact us!