Revise
Writing: Checking for Punctuation
Writing: Checking for Punctuation Revision
Why is Punctuation Important?
Punctuation makes writing clearer. A lack of clarity can negatively impact your grade, so it’s important that you can use punctuation correctly.
Correct punctuation also shows your technical skills to the examiner, so let’s have a look at some examples…
Common Punctuation Mistakes
Misused commas
A common punctuation error is misusing, or not using commas within a sentence.
Commas can change the meaning of the entire sentence, so it’s important to look out for this in your work!
For example:
Let’s eat Richard – a worrying prospect for poor Richard.
Let’s eat, Richard – an offer of a meal instead!
Comma splicing
Comma splicing is an error in which two independent clauses are joined with a comma, when they actually need to be separate sentences.
For example:
‘The sky was clear, we thought it wouldn’t rain’.
Here, ‘The sky was clear’ and ‘we thought it wouldn’t rain’ are both independent clauses, so they make sense as separate sentences. Using a comma here is incorrect.
The correct punctuation would therefore be ‘The sky was clear. We thought it wouldn’t rain‘.
Incorrect apostrophes
People often struggle when deciding when to use apostrophes for possession and contraction. Like commas, apostrophes can completely change the meaning of a sentence, so it’s very important that you know how to use them correctly.
Possession:
This kind of apostrophe is usually found at the end of nouns (things, people, and places) to indicate that something belongs to that noun.
A general rule of thumb: most singular nouns use an apostrophe and an ‘s’, and for most plural nouns you only need to add an apostrophe.
For example:
“Mark’s paper was submitted on time.”
“The stars’ light shone down.”
Contractions:
This is where the apostrophe indicates a missing letter.
Contractions are typically used in informal writing, so unless the format requires you to be more casual, try to avoid using these.
For example:
‘Can’t‘, meaning ‘cannot‘
‘Weren’t‘, meaning ‘were not‘.
How to Check for Punctuation Errors
Read through your work as though someone else has written it, and you are seeing it for the first time.
These are some of the questions you could keep in mind whilst doing this…
Ask yourself…
Does it seem to flow well?
Does the punctuation make sense within the sentence?
Do I need to add any punctuation, such as commas or apostrophes?
Is there any comma splicing that I need to correct?
Have I varied the sentence length enough in my answer?
By checking your work in stages, you are more likely to spot and correct your mistakes, and ensure that you gain those all-important SPaG marks.
