WRITING WELL

Tips to Help You Use Certain Punctuation Marks Correctly

And make your writing more professional — and more enjoyable to read

Photo by Jörg Angeli on Unsplash

Regardless of what you write, the correct use of punctuation can greatly impact how well you communicate your message. In Garner’s Modern English Usage, grammar guru Bryan Garner describes punctuation as “the cuing system by which writers signal their readers to slow down, pause, speed up…and otherwise move more smoothly through sentences.” Garner also states that “punctuating well is essential to writing solid sentences.”

Yet many writers take a great deal of liberty related to some punctuation marks. When it comes to choosing from among dashes, parentheses, commas, and colons — punctuation marks that often seem to accomplish something similar — most writers simply wing it rather than research which would be most appropriate to use in a particular sentence.

Let’s start with a definition from Merriam-Webster for each of these common punctuation marks:

· A dash indicates “a break in the thought or structure of a sentence.”

· Parentheses are used to “enclose a parenthetical expression.”

· A comma is used “as a mark of separation” within a sentence.