Martin Luther King, Jr. – Read each list of facts about Martin Luther King, Jr. Then use them to write a short paragraph whose sentences include properly punctuated items in a series. Show
Using Punctuation to Separate Items in a Series – The table contains the titles of five books, their authors, and the reason why they were once banned. Use this information to create a single sentence that presents all of this information. Punctuations are a great tool to make written texts easily readable and assist readers in understanding the text without any confusion. Without their use in written work, the language cannot make sense at all. The absence of these punctuations from any language means that the language cannot exist in written form at all. While there are innumerable punctuations marks used for different purposes, the purpose of separating items and elements in written form is mostly served by commas and semicolons. These two marks are used differently for different purposes and some specific rules determine their usage. Some of the most important rules for using commas and semi colons are given below: Using Commas to Separate ItemsCommas are used to indicate a small pause in any sentence and this makes them the most useful choice for separating items in a list or sentence. These indicate that the items are separate from each other, but are related in a sentence too. Some of the rules for using commas are: - One comma is used after each item in a sentence, but the last item follows a full stop and not a comma. - The last item in the list is preceded by 'and' which itself is preceded by a comma. - There can never be two 'ands' in the same list if the 'and' is not the part of the item's name. Other than that, all 'ands' except one must be replaced by a comma. Using Semicolons to Separate ItemsSemicolons are used where a pause is longer than that represented by a comma, but shorter than a period. Some of the rules for using these include: - A semi colon is used after a main item if the sub-items are to be listed afterwards - A semi colon can also be used before conjunctions in a sentence to indicate a pause - Words except proper nouns are never capitalized after semicolons There are several different punctuation styles for lists. As always, it’s important to be consistent and use the same style throughout your document.Bullet points, often called dot points, are more commonly used than numbers in lists, but numbers are useful if the order matters or if you want to refer to specific points within the list. Most lists are introduced with a colon ( : ), not a semicolon (a common mistake). Occasionally, a list will be introduced by a sentence ending in a full stop rather than a colon. With all these styles, you need to decide whether to make your first-level bullet points flush or indented. You also need to use the same type of bullet point throughout. The most common is the round black bullet point. For second-level bullet points, the most common are dashes or round hollow circles. Lists using full sentencesWith lists that are made up of full sentences, use normal sentence punctuation, as in the following list. Some editing tips:
Lists with points relating to a stem statementSemicolons were traditionally used in lists to separate each bullet point, but although this is still correct, they are not used as often today. Legal writing is probably the main exception. If you do use semicolons, the accepted practice, as in this list, is to:
A common style is to use lower case for the first letter in each bullet point, and a full stop after the last bullet point. Before you travel overseas, remember to:
Many organisations have succumbed to the Microsoft default and now recommend starting all lists with initial capitals. Whether or not you use a final full stop is also a style choice. As always, consistency is important. Before you travel overseas, remember to:
Lists with single words or short phrasesI used to differentiate between short and longer lists, but readers failed to see this distinction, so I recommend using the same style for both short and long lists. A knowledge of first aid is useful for:
A knowledge of first aid is useful for:
Grammatical consistencyYou need to be consistent with the way each point relates to a stem statement. You should be able to read each point with the stem statement and it forms a sentence. When signing up new clients, you must:
Adding extra information to run-on listsWhen you’re using a run-on list and want to add extra information to a bullet point, you need to think about your punctuation. While it is acceptable to have an additional sentence with no full stop, it looks odd. If you are going on holiday you need to:
Consider using a dash before the additional information, or putting it in brackets. Before you travel overseas, remember to:
Want to learn more about punctuation? Why not do Mary Morel’s online writing course: An A to Z of Punctuation?
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John, the baker; Simon, the policeman; and Toby, the architect. (Notice how semicolons are used to separate the list items.)Normally, we use commas to separate the items in a list. Look at this list for example: This is a normal list. It would be written like this:John, Simon, and Toby. (There are no semicolons in this list because none of the list items contains a comma. However, if one or more of those list items had a comma, semicolons could be used to separate the list items to "outrank" the commas in the list items.) Items in lists are usually separated with commas. For example:
This next section is mostly about commas not semicolons, but it will affect how you punctuate your lists. In the first example below, the comma after "butter" is called a serial comma or an Oxford comma. In the US, when there are more than two list items, your readers will expect a comma before the conjunction (in this case, "and") that precedes the last list item. In the UK, the tendency is not to use the Oxford comma. Be warned that Brits and Americans are inconsistent on this guidance. The bottom line is this: Choose whichever convention your company uses (or which you like best if you have that much freedom) and be consistent.
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