Apostrophes; Exclamation marks; Question marks

APOSTROPHES
The apostrophe has 2 main uses:

1. The apostrophe to show possession:
a. Singular
An apostrophe and the letter s is used to show possession with indefinite pronouns, with animate nouns and with expressions of time.

An indefinite pronoun is one which refers to some unknown or unspecified person.
I borrowed someone’sbook.
Anyone’s comments will be welcome.

An animate noun is one used for anything living such as a person or animal.
Carol’s skill;
Thedog’s bark;
Myfriend’s bible

Notice the difference between those examples and inanimate nouns, or objects which are not living. Possession is then shown by the word of
The colour of the lantern;
The population of China

An expression of time, whether singular or plural can, and usually does, take an apostrophe ands.
One hour’s work;
three years’ experience

b. Plural
When, as happens almost all the time, the plural ends in s, an apostrophe follows the s to show possession.
The boys’ team;
The dogs’ training session;
The ladies’ evening

However when the plural ends in any other way an apostrophe and s are added.
The men’s room;
The children’s playhouse

When you have a double subject, only give the second noun an apostrophe.
Ee Chuan and Lyn’s report.

Personal pronouns and possessive adjectives NEVER take apostrophes.
Personal pronouns - Mine, his, hers, ours, yours, theirs
Possessive adjectives - My, his, her, its, our, your their


2. The apostrophe to show contraction:
When 2 words are run together to make writing seem closer to speech, an apostrophe shows something is left out and 2 words have been merged:
I am delighted becomes I’m delighted.
It is hot becomes It’s hot.
We have finished becomes We’ve finished.
They will be coming becomes They’ll be coming.

Notice the difference in meaning and form between the two words it is contracted into it’s and the possessive adjective its in its colour.


EXCLAMATION MARKS
Don’t use them unless you must, and don’t ever use 2 or more together. Too much punctuation is like too much salt in the soup. It completely spoils the taste.


QUESTION MARKS
Question marks for direct questions go INSIDE the quotation marks.
She asked, “Have you seen my thesis?”

Question marks go OUTSIDE quotation marks for a statement within a question.
Did Shima say, “I handed it to Raman”?

Drop the 2nd question mark (at the end) if you have a question within a question.
Did Lyn ask, “Are you going to supervise my thesis?"

Dashes; Hypens; Quotation marks

DASHES
A dash is a way of forcing your reader to pause. It can be used singly or in pairs, and can be useful when you want to show a break in thought e.g.
Faulty brakes cause accidents – some of them serious.
I went to the police station – as you guessed I would – to bail him out.


HYPHENS
Hyphens are used for 2 very different purposes:
1. To make 2 words into a single adjective before a noun.
She dived into the deep-blue sea. (The colour blue was deep.)

NOTE: The hyphen is ONLY used when the ADJECTIVE comes immediately before a NOUN e.g.
Michelle Yeoh is a well-known Malaysian BUT Michelle Yeoh is well known in Malaysia.

2. A hyphen is used to split a word divided between 2 lines e.g.
accom-
modation

Writing is easier to read if words are not divided, so avoid dividing them. Since 1 syllable standing alone looks odd, try too avoid hyphenating words with fewer than four syllables. If you have four or more syllables in a word and are not sure how the syllables are divided, check a dictionary.


QUOTATION MARKS
Quotation marks are used to draw attention to words in several ways:

1. Use double quotation marks at the very beginning and very end to quote directly from speech or writing. Use single quotation marks to set off a quotation within a quotation:

Ang said, “I heard him say, ‘I won’t go’ but I noticed he did go.”

2. Use quotation marks to draw special attention to a word or phrase, but not to apologise for one. I am not sure what “commission” really means.

3. Use quotation marks to indicate the title of something that makes up part of a published work. When you are writing a paragraph, put the title of an article within journal, for instance, or a poem within a collection, in inverted commas, single or *double.

NOTE: *This rule applies to paragraphs, but not to all types of bibliography. In the APA format, you do not use quotation marks for titles of articles or chapters.

The group, Beyond, sang “Karm Tin Ngo” beautifully.

III. PUNCTUATION & OTHER CONVENTIONS

Think of punctuation as the most wonderful help to both reader and writer. Reading anything unpunctuated is so difficult as to be hardly worth doing, rather like playing tennis on a court without a net.

Writing can be much more exact and spirited when punctuation is used deftly. Punctuation enables the writer to convey, and the reader to receive, exactly the message intended.

Consider these sentences:
Azli, the police officer, acted conceitedly.
The name ‘Azli’ and the label ‘police officer’ are equally important. If either of them were dropped the message would be almost the same but the information, less.

Azli (the police officer) acted conceitedly.
This time the information ‘Azli’ is a police officer is slid in, but of minor importance. The name ‘Azli’ must be kept but the incidental information in brackets could be dropped without much loss. The brackets do the same thing in writing as a dropped voice would do in speaking.

Azli - the police officer - acted conceitedly.
This time the fact that the person who acted conceitedly is a police officer, risking his reputation, his job, and the safety of those he should be protecting, is stressed. The dashes hint at shock. The voice is either raised or hushed to draw great attention to the words between them.

Such is the power of punctuation. The following suggestions may help you use it more skilfully. Especially make yourselves familiar with semicolons and colons which are so useful in effective business writing and so unnecessary almost everywhere else.


COLONS are used for balance.
1. They introduce a list, which follows on separate lines e.g.
The farm comprises:
a. two acres of horticultural land
b. twenty acres of forest
c. five hundred acres of palm old trees.

2. They introduce a list on the same line e.g.
The farm comprises the following: two acres…

Notice that this time the part before the colon must be an independent clause, one that can standalone and still make sense.

3. They show extreme opposites e.g.
She succeeded brilliantly; he failed dismally.


SEMICOLONS show a strong break.
1. They can separate items in a complex list e.g.
I ordered chicken rice with soup; mixed vegetables, with plenty of mushrooms; bubur chacha, accompanied by sliced mango, pineapple and oranges’ and a tall glass of iced tea.

2. They can separate independent clauses, which are linked in thought e.g.
Xia Ming studied science; she intended to be a botanist. Kar Mun took management studies; she hoped to be an accountant.

The twins enrolled in social science; they both wanted to be high school teachers.
OR
The bus had crashed into the train; however, the damage was minimal.

Sometimes both colons and semicolons are useful in a single sentence. The example given above could well be worded this way:

I ordered the following: chicken rice with soup; mixed vegetables, with plenty of mushrooms; bubur chacha, accompanied by sliced mango, pineapple and oranges; and a tall glass of iced tea.


COMMAS are used to break the flow of a sentence. Most are optional but they are mandatory for 5 kinds of construction:

1. To separate introductory, long clauses e.g.
After the chemist had checked his findings rigorously, he wrote his paper.

2. To indicate non-restrictive clauses (ref: COMMON ERRORS 18 & 19; 1st Feb 2006) e.g.
The engineer, who has travelled overseas, is now employed at Singapore.

Without the 2 commas, the words who has travelled overseas are indispensable. With them, the information who has travelled overseas could be dropped without affecting the main message of the sentence.

3. To indicate that 2 nouns both refer to the same person or object. Sometimes these are called nouns in apposition. E.g. Lennie Brideson, the physicist, has been awarded a grant.

4. To show that adverbs go with a whole clause e.g. I believe, however, that the results should be checked.

Notice the difference between such a sentence and one in which an adverb simply belongs with an adjective e.g. However hard he works, he never catches up.

5. To set off information which is extra to the main thread of the sentence e.g.
Speeding on his skateboard, Zamri crashed into the fence.

Remember that all commas, colons and semicolons break rather than join. They should not interrupt a sentence but rather show the pattern within it.

COMMON ERRORS 17, 18, 19 and 20

COMMON ERROR 17: SHIFT OF THE GRAMMATICAL “PERSON”
However many pronouns the language has, the noun and pronoun system of any language has three “persons”. In English, the 1st person words are I, me, we, us; the 2nd person word is you; and the 3rd person words are he, him, she, it, they, them, and every other pronoun e.g. someone and every noun that exists.

Do NOT shift from one “person” to another within a sentence.

WRONG: If one is a student, you need to study hard and get good grades.
RIGHT: When you are a student, you need to study hard and get good grades.


COMMON ERROR 18: WRONG SHIFT OF TENSE
Tense shows time. A sentence may show different times within it e.g. “Before she came over, I had decided what to do.” Here, the word “before” signals that the sentence will contain different tenses. However, unless the meaning dictates that you need a change in tense, keep your tenses consistent.

WRONG: The dean makes careful plans to check on student harassment within the university but all his efforts came to nothing.

RIGHT: The dean made careful plans to check on student harassment within the university but all his efforts came to nothing.


COMMON ERROR 19: FLOATING INFINITIVE
Ensure that infinitives (i.e. groups of word e.g. “to go” / “to have gone” which have no subject of their own) link logically with the subject of a full verb.

WRONG: To succeed in sport, regular practice is necessary.
RIGHT: To succeed in sport, you need to practice regularly.

Note: A person, not practice, will succeed in sport, so a person must become the subject of the full verb.


COMMON ERROR 20: CONFUSION OF CASE WITH PRONOUNS
Inflections (or different forms of a word) given to show whether a noun or pronoun is subject or object of a sentence are rare in English. That’s why some writers are not clear about them.
A few are left in English. They are all pronouns and in constant use.

Personal pronouns e.g. I, me, he, him, she and so on don’t cause much trouble but relative pronouns can be troublesome e.g. I know whois coming; and interrogative pronouns e.g. Who gave you the apple?

“WHO” is always the SUBJECT. E.g.
I wondered who she was. OR Who is that?

“WHOM” is the OBJECT. E.g.
I wonder whom you insulted. OR Whom did she meet?

In some cases, although strict grammar requires whom to be used, these days most people say and accept sentences e.g.
Who did you take to the party?

HOWEVER, to use whom when you should use who is seriously incorrect. So, if in doubt, always use “WHO”.

Try to avoid all 20 irregularities especially the first 10 which tend to make writing ambiguous.