The Importance of Being Punctuated

It is said that punctuation marks date back to the fifth century BC. The Greeks were among the first people who used punctuation to show were the breaks were between sentences and parts of sentences. During that period in time, it was really difficult to make out the end and the meaning of a sentence because there were no breaks between words, and only capital letters were used.

An easy rule of thumb to abide by every time you punctuate a sentence is to know what the sentence is supposed to mean when it is read, and how it would sound like when it is read aloud. Of course, the grammatical aspect of the sentence should also be taken into consideration at all times.

The most important, and most used punctuation of all, is the full stop. Full stops and capital letters show the breaks between sentences, while commas and other marks show divisions within sentences. The uses of exclamation marks are fine in personal messages. However, be frugal when using it any piece of writing, as over using the exclamation mark would defeat the purpose of emphasizing the point you wish to point out. Observe the example below:

An English teacher wrote these words on the whiteboard: "woman without her man is nothing". The teacher then asked the students to punctuate the words correctly.

The men wrote: "Woman, without her man, is nothing."

The women wrote: "Woman! Without her, man is nothing."