So what are the basic building blocks of good punctuation? I'm assuming you are at least a little smarter than poor Charly. One quality he had was persistence - can you do as well as he did?

Capitals and Full-stops

These are the 'backbones' of your writing. A properly constructed sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full-stop, or period, as the Americans say. And don't forget, when you use the singular, personal pronoun 'I' - it MUST be a capital letter! Do not, under any circumstances, write 'i did this' or 'i think so and so'. It is ignorant and looks unintelligent. You want to be an expert, don't you? :-)

Exclamation marks and Question marks

Both of these are simply another way of concluding a sentence. Exclamation marks are normally used to make a special point or...well...exclamation. Use them sparingly and carefully. And don't use three of them together. It looks really dumb!!!

Question marks are simply used if you are asking a question...really?

Do you think linen dog bedding is too expensive? Maybe not! Check out our prices...

Commas

These get a special page of this training all to themselves. They are quite horrible, but completely necessary, little devils. You must use them in at least three specific parts of your sentences, so head over to page 6 and learn the tricks.

Colons and Semi-colons...

...have nothing whatever to do with your bowels even though they may be a pain in the a**e!!! (Sorry - too many exclamation marks and a very bad pun as well) See page 6 for a full explanation and some examples.

Quotation marks

These are used for...amazingly enough...quotations. When you are quoting someone else's written or spoken words, you need to use quotation marks. This is called a 'direct quotation' And remember, they must always be used in pairs like this: "and"

Mr Bassett from the Sad Hound's Association said "Linen dog bedding is best for old dogs".

You use quotation marks because you are 'quoting' Mr Jones. If you wrote...

Mr Jones from the Sad Hound's Association believes linen dog bedding is best for old dogs...

... you don't need quotation marks. This is called an indirect quotation.

They are also used to designate some irony or reservation, for example, you may think that it is ridiculous for dogs to need linen bedding so you would write:

Mr Jones suggested that linen bedding was 'necessary' for older dogs.

The quotation marks indicate that you don't actually subscribe to this belief!

Double or Single?

In general, I use double quotation marks for speech and single quotation marks for designation of irony (like I did in the sentence above) or for technical terms, jargon and certain proper names. For example, 'Bartlett Pears' and 'genetic incompatibility' and 'direct quotation'. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules. Just be consistent throughout your website.

There are other uses, but get some of these right and you'll be doing well.

Aggravating Apostrophes

It's a disease. Completely incurable (as yet). I have been known to correct the usage of apostrophes on the back of toilet doors. I correct handwritten signs advertising tomato's and potatoe's - heaven help me - nothing brings out the pedant in me quicker than an incorrect apostrophe. Especially when someone should know better. Like an expert!

Parentheses (brackets)

Fairly self-explanatory and I probably use too many of them. But they do add a little bit of interest to your writing and there are times that they are required. For example, you need them when you are including an alternative meaning for a word like I did in the heading. You might be writing some technical jargon that you don't think everyone will understand. So you put an alternative (different) word in brackets (parentheses). Get it?

Next up - commas.


P.S. There is a deliberate mistake on page 9. Find it and PM me - don't write it in the comments section. Any other errors - please let me know in the comments.



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WouterdeHaas Premium
Page seven. This might be an American English versus British English thing (I use a horrible mixture of both), but I always talk about 'food bowls', not 'feed' bowls.

And then: "...are made of finest yak felt...", shouldn't that be: "...are made of THE finest yak felt..."? WIthout the capitalisation, of course?

At point 2, a space between 'to' and 'join' is missing.

I think I have my commas reasonably under control, even though I'm handicapped by my native language (Dutch) using a slightly different set of rules for their usage. But when the Oxford comma comes into play I get hopelessly lost. The colons and semicolons tend to drive me bonkers at times. If I can just remember what you wrote about them here, I might improve!
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LED63 Premium
Yes, this is just a case of English/Australian versus American English. We tend to use English English in Australia. I started to say that we could use either, but I believe that you are correct as regards dog FOOD bowls. If I was talking about chickens, I would say 'chicken FEED' bowls. I think I'll leave this and see if anyone else comments.
In the yak felt case, either would be correct. (One of the madnesses of English) I can say 'made of the finest yak felt' or 'made of finest yak felt'. The article is not compulsory here.
I'll check the spacing - it is so annoying when that happens!
You're great! I think I'll employ you as my personal editor!
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WouterdeHaas Premium
Cheers for clarifying. I shouldn't forget to add that I'm a bit of a cheat, been married to an American for 13 years. Not sure if a Dutch editor is the best of ideas but then again I use both languages professionally for my offline business. Companies hire me to write International English copy (quite different from correct & proper English) for instance.
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kennick2015 Premium
I was fortunate to have had a public school education in England, in the days when all masters (teachers) wore mortar boards and gowns. I appreciate the considerable amount of work you've done to provide this valuable training. Ken.
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LED63 Premium
Thanks Ken - and you got the mistake right. (what an oxymoron!) I had parents who insisted on correct English even to the point of having a huge argument with my sister's teacher over the 'children's playground' issue, although, if I remember rightly, it was 'the children's books'
Cheers
Ellie
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kennick2015 Premium
Oops a few grammar errors there!
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WouterdeHaas Premium
Hi Ellie, another non-native speaker here (dash between non and native, is that alright?). First of all, very thorough training here, splendid! Liked and bookmarked... I have an opinion or two and probably some questions as well. But for now, I'd like to flex my English language muscles a bit and see if I can spot any other mistakes besides the deliberate one on page nine. I'm currently on page six and are wondering about the last three sentences. Allow me to quote: "You might be writing some technical jargon that don't think everyone will understand. So you put an alternative (different) word in brackets (parentheses) Get it?". I am wondering whether there shouldn't be "you" between "that" and "don't" in the first sentence. And I'm missing a full stop behind your last bracket of the second sentence. Would love to know if I'm right and feel free to rip this reply apart as well. I think I made many mistakes, especially with punctuation!
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LED63 Premium
Excellent! I'm looking forward to this kind of feedback. You've got no idea how many times I read and re-read this training HOPING there were no mistakes! I could always pretend that they are deliberate ones! But no - I missed that, although I do believe it is a case of me correcting the sentence and backspacing too far.
But I thank you and will fix it pronto!
Yes - the hyphen between non and native is correct. I was going to add the correct use of hyphens but wondered if it was too long already. They are also a rather tricky subject and one that I see misused, unused and abused quite often.
You don't need to use 'alright' - it's just 'right' as in
Is that right? (or correct)
You've done amazingly well for a non-native speaker.
Thank you
Ellie
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WouterdeHaas Premium
My pleasure and thank you! I suspected as much, any mistakes I may have found really looked like typos (nearly used a ' there!) and not grammar mistakes.
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LED63 Premium
(Nose in the air) Yes, well - I doubt I would really make that many mistakes..hahahaha!
I've really enjoyed this - just shows how easy it is to let mistakes slip past - and I was trying really hard, too!
Thanks heaps
Ellie
(I cover the subject of slang and colloquial English in the next segment!)
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Loes Premium
Very nice tutorial Ellie, very clear explanation for not to use apostrophes for plurals. And how to write the different do's and don'ts.
Hope I wrote that correct:)
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LED63 Premium
You do really well Loes! English is your second language isn't it? To be 100% correct it is:
Dos and Don'ts - even tho' it looks a bit weird. That's why people get mixed up and write banana's instead of bananas.
Cheers
Ellie
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Loes Premium
Thanks, even Google doesn't bother to filter the Do's and don'ts as "did you mean" dos and don'ts?
From now on dos and don'ts
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LED63 Premium
On ya Loes! Have you found the mistake yet?
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Loes Premium
I believe I did:)!
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AngelsBird Premium
Hi Ellie,

I really like this training, because I need it.
Since my mother tongue is not the English language, it is hard to get some content well written.
Do you have maybe an idea how I can improve the quality of my content with a tool or something?
I use the free plug-in of Grammarly.com right now, but it's expensive to buy it.

Thanks,
Grtz,
Bert
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LED63 Premium
Hi Bert
I haven't used Grammarly myself, because being fairly proficient in English, I tend to trust my own judgement, or if I'm a bit puzzled, I simply type my specific problem into Google and check whatever website pops up. Some are better than others.
There are some 'spin-writing' tools available, but it is not recommended as google tends to pick up 'spun' content fairly quickly.
You can use Fivver and Elance to have your articles/content written, but what I found was that most of the people who offer to do writing are not native English speakers and the ones who are, charge a fair bit.
There are various translation tools available, but I am not altogether sure that they are very accurate. Some translations tend to come out pretty weird!
All I can really honestly recommend is that you get a good English writer to check your work for you. I have done so for a few people here, but it is time-consuming and I have to charge something or I would spend a lot of time and never get my own work done! You can send me a PM if you want to talk to me further about this option.
It's a good idea to ask for editing feedback here - specifically request that people check on your spelling, grammar etc.
I'd be glad to know if anyone knows of a good tool, but I really think it's just a case of learning, practising, checking, editing and asking for help to check your work.
I'm sorry not to be more helpful
Thank you for coming by. I appreciate it!
Cheers
Ellie
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AngelsBird Premium
Thank you for the feedback, I did not expect a "click here" solution.
Maybe I will ask in the future to review something, but then I will first send a PM for the details...

And indeed: the most important is exercise (But I have to exercise the right things! ;-) )

Grtz,
Bert
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LED63 Premium
Yeah - unfortunately I don't think there is a 'clickable' solution yet! Have you ever read the Roald Dahl story called 'The Great Automatic Grammatizator? It's pretty funny and could be what you are looking for!
Cheers
Ellie
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AngelsBird Premium
No I didn't, but I will check it... :-) (I always have to think at Charlie and... ) when I hear the name Roald Dahl...
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