User:Parinabrar

PUNCTUATION
Punctuation  is the use of spacing, conventional signs, and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud.Another description is, "It is the practice action or system of inserting points or other small marks into texts in order to aid interpretation; division of text into sentences, clauses, etc., by means of such marks.

In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences. For example: "woman, without her man, is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of men to women), and "woman: without her, man is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of women to men) have very different meanings; as do "eats shoots and leaves" (which means the subject consumes plant growths) and "eats, shoots, and leaves" (which means the subject eats first, then fires a weapon, and then leaves the scene). The sharp differences in meaning are produced by the simple differences in punctuation within the example pairs, especially the latter.

SENTENCE ENDING
Three of the fourteen punctuation marks are appropriate for use as sentence endings. They are the period, question mark, and exclamation point.

⧫The period (.) is placed at the end of declarative sentences, statements thought to be complete and after many abbreviations.

⧫Use a question mark (?) to indicate a direct question when placed at the end of a sentence.

⧫The exclamation point (!) is used when a person wants to express a sudden outcry or add emphasis.

DASH AND HYPHEN
⧫A dash is used to separate words into statements. There are two common types of dashes: en dash and em dash..

⧫A hyphen is used to join two or more words together into a compound term and is not separated by spaces. For example, part-time, back-to-back, well-known.

APOSTROPHE AND QUOTATION MARK
⧫An apostrophe (') is used to indicate the omission of a letter or letters from a word, the possessive case, or the plurals of lowercase letters. Examples of the apostrophe in use include:

⧫Quotation marks  (" ") are a pair of punctuation marks used primarily to mark the beginning and end of a passage attributed to another and repeated word for word. They are also used to indicate meanings and to indicate the unusual or dubious status of a word.