Sarvarish Rausaria (A2325312010) --Punctuations

When we speak English, we have all sorts of things we can use to make our meaning clear: stress, intonation, rhythm, pauses — even, if all else fails, repeating what we've said. When we write, however, we can't use any of these devices, and the work that they do in speech must be almost entirely handled by punctuation. Consequently, written English has developed a conventional system of punctuation which is consistent and sensible: every punctuation mark has one or more particular jobs to do, and every one should be used always and only to do those jobs. If your reader has to wade through your strange punctuation, she will have trouble following your meaning; at worst, she may be genuinely unable to understand what you've written. If you think I'm exaggerating, consider the following string of words, and try to decide what it's supposed to mean:

We had one problem only Janet knew we faced bankruptcy

Have you decided? Now consider this string again with differing punctuation:

We had one problem: only Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.

We had one problem only: Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.

We had one problem only, Janet knew: we faced bankruptcy.

We had one problem only Janet knew we faced: bankruptcy.

Are you satisfied that all four of these have completely different meanings? If so, perhaps you have some inkling of how badly you can confuse your reader by punctuating poorly. What is the reader supposed to make of some feeble effort like this?

*We had one problem only, Janet knew we faced bankruptcy.

(Throughout this document, an asterisk is used to mark a sentence which is poorly punctuated, or which is otherwise defective.)Bad punctuation does not require an enormous effort to put right. If you work carefully through this document, then, providing you think carefully about what you're writing as you write it, you will undoubtedly find that your punctuation has improved a great deal. Your readers will thank you for it ever after.

The full stop (.), also called the period, presents few problems. It is chiefly used to mark the end of a sentence expressing a statement.

A question mark (?) is placed at the end of a sentence which is a direct question. 

The exclamation mark (!), known informally as a bang or a shriek, is used at the end of a sentence or a short phrase which expresses very strong feeling.

The comma (,) is very frequently used and very frequently used wrongly. In fact, the rules for using commas are really rather simple, though complicated by the fact that the comma has four distinct uses.

The colon (:) seems to bewilder many people, though it's really rather easy to use correctly, since it has only one major use. But first please note the following: the colon is never preceded by a white space.

The semicolon (;) has only one major use. It is used to join two complete sentences into a single written sentence.

The hyphen (-) is the small bar found on every keyboard. It has several related uses; in every case, it is used to show that what it is attached to does not make up a complete word by itself. The hyphen must never be used with white spaces at both ends, though in some uses it may have a white space at one end.

The use of quotation marks, also called inverted commas, is very slightly complicated by the fact that there are two types: single quotes (` ') and double quotes (" "). As a general rule, British usage has in the past usually preferred single quotes for ordinary use, but double quotes are now increasingly common; American usage has always preferred double quotes.