Apostrophe Use Quotation Use Comma Use Punctuation Rules Apostrophe Use Quotation Use Comma Use

Apostrophe Use- Rules To replace missing letters in contractions. Example: She’s always cheerful. They didn’t answer the telephone. I’m always on the phone.

Apostrophe Use- Rules With s to show possession with nouns and indefinite pronouns. Example: He found a girl’s jacket in the hall. He walked into the girls’ gymnasium by mistake. He found someone’s jacket in the hall.

Apostrophe Use- Rules With s to form the plural of numbers and letters. Example: The ice skater received three 10’s and two 9.5’s for her performance. The teacher gave all A’s and B’s last semester.

Quotation Use- Rules To separate the exact words someone says or writes from a reporting phrase. Example: She said, “I’ll miss you.” “I’ll write you every day,” she promised. “I’ll think about you every day,” she continued, “and I’ll dream about you every night.”

Comma Use- Rules To separate items in a series of three or more items. Example: I’m taking Spanish, English, physics, and economics this semester. The teacher will read your paragraph, make comments on it, and return it to you.

Comma Use- Rules Before a coordinating conjunction in a compound sentence. Example: We are bringing sandwiches, and Tom is bringing soft drinks to the picnic. We don’t need to bring raincoats, for the sun is shining brightly.

Comma Use- Rules After a dependant clause, that comes before and independent clause in a complex sentence. Example: Because the sun is shining brightly, we don’t need to bring raincoats. As soon as we arrived at the park, the men started playing soccer.

Comma Use- Rules To separate extra-information adjective clauses from the rest of the sentence. Example: The Nile, which is the longest river in the world, is 4,160 miles long.

Comma Use- Rules After most transition signals at the beginning of a sentence. Example: Finally, we arrived at our hotel. However, our rooms were not ready. After an hour, we left to find a place to eat. Across the street, we found a small cafe.

Comma Use- Rules To separate sentence connectors that appear in the middle of an independent clause. Example: Our rooms, however, were not ready. Lions, for example, can outrun all but three animals.

Sentence Example Last Sunday, my friend and I were walking along the beach and spotted an interesting shell on top of the sand. We stopped, knelt down, picked it up, and brushed the sand from its surface. It was a disk about 3 inches in diameter with four V-shaped notches around its outer edge. It was round, flat, and gray-white in color. It was large for a sea shell, yet it weighed almost nothing. I held it up to my nose and sniffed the salty smell of the ocean.

Sentence Example On the top side of the disk, Mother nature had punched tiny holes in the shape of a flower with five petals. The other side of the disk was very plain, for it had only one small hole in the centre. At first, we thought the shell was empty, but we were wrong. We shook it, and a stream of sand fell out. Later, we did a little research and learned that it wasn’t a shell at all. It was the skeleton of an ocean animal.

Complete Paragraph Last Sunday, my friend and I were walking along the beach and spotted an interesting shell on top of the sand. We stopped, knelt down, picked it up, and brushed the sand from its surface. It was a disk about 3 inches in diameter, with four V-shaped notches around its outer edge. It was round, flat, and gray-white in color. It was large for a sea shell, yet it weighed almost nothing. I held it up to my nose and sniffed the salty smell of the ocean. On the top side of the disk, Mother nature had punched tiny holes in the shape of a flower with five petals. The other side of the disk was very plain, for it had only one small hole in the centre. At first, we thought the shell was empty, but we were wrong. We shook it, and a stream of sand fell out. Later, we did a little research and learned that it wasn’t a shell at all. It was the skeleton of an ocean animal.