Over the last few months I’ve covered the nuts and bolts of punctuation in my blog posts and I hope you’ve found them useful. (You can see what you missed here). Today, as luck would have it, I stumbled across this rhyme which neatly sums up the ten golden rules of punctuation as laid down by a Victorian schoolmistress:
Sentences begin with a capital letter
So as to make your writing better.
Use a full stop to mark the end.
It closes every sentence penned.
The comma is for short pauses and breaks,
And also for lists the writer makes.
Dashes – like these – are for thoughts by the way.
They give extra information (so do brackets we may say).
These two dots are colons: they pause to compare.
They also do this: list, explain and prepare.
The semicolon makes a break; followed by a clause.
It does the job of words that link; it’s also a short pause.
An apostrophe shows the owner of anyone’s things.
And it’s also useful for shortenings.
I’m so glad! He’s so mad! We’re having such a lark!
To show strong feelings use an exclamation mark!
A question mark follows What? When? Where? Why? and How?
Do you? Can I? Shall we? Give us your answer now!
“Quotation marks” enclose what is said,
Which is why they’re sometimes called “speech marks” instead.
If you’re unclear on correct punctuation and would like some help with your website wording, newsletters, brochures or any other marketing communication, just get in touch and we’ll be happy to help!
