Extra Credit: Punctuation Practice

Before this extra credit assignment, I never realized that a simple punctuation mark can make such a big difference in a sentence. It can help a reader clearly understand the author's intended message as well as completely change a sentence's meaning. Punctuation marks can also indicate when certain words should be emphasized or when there should be a pause when reading. Specifically, some of the punctuation marks I worked with included: commas, quotation marks, apostrophes, hyphens, colons, and semicolons. Out of these, I believe I excelled the most at realizing when a comma, quote, or apostrophe is needed in order to have correct punctuation within a sentence. Although this is the case, I did not completely understand all the punctuation marks. For instance, I found myself struggling to notice where colons and semicolons should go as well as their purposes. This is because I usually never incorporated these marks into a sentence or used them to my advantage in the past. Despite this, I was able to learn that colons are mainly used to introduce an example, list, explanation, or quotation whereas a semicolon is used to create a pause between two independent, yet related clauses. This assignment took a lot of time and made me really focus, but once I completed it, I believe I had a better understanding of these two punctuation marks. Overall, reading sophisticated or scholarly articles and continuing to practice with colons, semicolons, and other punctuation marks should allow me to gain an even better comprehension of this topic. This will then allow my writing skills to improve and grow.