1. Interesting Punctuation and Sentence structures
Add variety and interest to your writing

2. COLONS Introduce longer items in a list
Eg. Fleet offers plenty to the sporty-minded: a half-decent leisure centre with a reasonable range of activities at prices that you won’t find too outrageous; a skate-park where you’ll find a fair few teens hanging out on the weekend; and an annual half-marathon for the seriously masochistic.

3. COLONS (contd)
To signal that you’re going to ‘answer’ or develop what you said in the first part of the sentence
E.g. The town centre will serve the basic needs of most families: for anything out of the ordinary, you’ll need to find shopping centres further afield.
E.g. Fleet is an attractive, and in many ways pleasant, suburban town: there’s little grafitti and crime is not commonplace.
NOTE – a dash would do in these examples

4. SEMI-COLONS
Separate main clauses (simple sentences) on a related theme
E.g. Fleet is home to only 20,000 people; it is quiet; nothing much happens here.

5. Vary sentences Questions, statements, exclamations, commands
E.g. Does Fleet really deserve its reputation as a sleepy, dull and more than averagely-boring town?
The uncomfortable truth is that Fleet is just plain boring.
What rubbish!
Take a stroll down the High Street on any Saturday morning.

6. Vary Sentences Simple e.g. Fleet is pleasant enough.
Compound e.g. Fleet is pleasant enough but it’s hardly the most exciting town on the face of the planet and you could be forgiven for never having heard of it.
Complex e.g. First and foremost, Fleet is a great place for getting away from as, being on a mainline railway route, you’ll find it easy to get to London, with all its airports, and if it’s a day out you’re after, the coast and countryside are just a short car drive away.

7. Use commas correctly
The town centre, with its outrageously priced car parks, offers all the usual high street names you’d expect.
To start with, Fleet is a pretty dismal place to find yourself on a weekend, if you’re a teenager, that is.

8. Don’t put main clauses together without some form of punctuation or connective
Fleet is a hardly a buzzing metropolis it is overrun with people over fifty.
Fleet is a hardly a buzzing metropolis; it is overrun with people over fifty.
Fleet is a hardly a buzzing metropolis mainly because it is overrun with people over fifty