A Simple Class: Basic Grammar

Lesson 1: Punctuation

This lesson we will be starting with basic punctuation, my pet peeve with new writers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. Periods, exclamation marks and question marks.

You might think that everybody knows how to use these but you'd be surprised at how many writers neglect these little things. I'll go over these in the next lesson but for now, all I can say is don't forget these! I can't really explain much with these by themselves but if you have any questions please do ask!

2. Apostrophes.

These little things right here -> ' <- are essential in any type of writing in English, whether it be for a school essay or a story on here.

Uses:
- They are used to show possession. Ex: "It is the dog's ball." Not: "It is the dogs ball."
- After a word that ends in a "s" (ex: dogs, Walters, etc) the apostrophe goes after the "s". Ex: "The dogs' ball." Now there is more than one dog owning the ball.
- For contractions such as: would have, shoud have or I have. You can use the apostrophe and shorten it to: would've, should've and I've. This is a very commen use but not nessecary. Sometimes I feel it's better to have the full words to achieve a certain effect.

3. Commas.

Here's a fine example of a nice little comma -> , <- Now these ones can be a little bit more tricky but they are also the most frequently used.

Uses:
- Use these when making a list. Ex: "The dog, the cat and the horse chased the ball." See how I seperated the dog and the cat using the comma? Just make sure when you do this it doesn't look like this: "The dog, the cat, the horse chased the ball." There must be an "and" or "or", something to break up the list.
- Used to seperate adjectives when they are interchangeable. Ex: "The happy, young dog chased the bouncing, blue ball." Or: "The young, happy dog..." You cannot use this with adjectives that must go in certain order. Such as: "A beautiful summer day." You don't say: "A summer beautiful day." It just doesn't work.
- Used to add extra information. Ex: "The girl, who was 16, played with her dog." See how you could take away the extra info without hurting the meaning? It works at the end at the end of the sentence too!

- I'm not quite sure how to explain this so I'll show you an example. "Let's eat Anna." Grammatically that says that we are literally going to eat Anna. "Let's eat, Anna." Says that we are going to eat with Anna. See the difference? A simple comma can change the entire meaning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Practice 1

Write a short paragraph describing a man (or woman) going shopping using the following. There may be no more than 3 lines of dialogue.

- All three types of punctuation at least once.
- 4 apostrophes.
- 5 commas.

Feel free to look back at the lesson for help! This is doesn't have a due date but please try to get it in within a week of reading this. It is worth 3 marks.