Why Punctuate?

[Music] on your mark get set track Meers in place on your mark is important it's also a good opportunity to remind you that it's time for you to get on your marks your punctuation marks Punctuation is much more important than most of us realize for example take newspaper writing watch this linotype operator as he sets up the story of our track meet for tomorrow's newspaper now suppose it were possible for us to remove the punctuation marks the printer works just the same the paper comes off the presses just as fast and is delivered the same it looks almost the same except for one little thing it doesn't make sense no without the punctuation marks it just doesn't make sense take out the punctuation marks and all you have left is confusion now here's another thing about punctuation suppose you should want to answer an advertisement for a job and suppose we removed all the punctuation marks from your typewriter and you typed your letter of application anyway and this is the man you hope will hire you and he's reading your letter which looks like this without punctuation since that's the way you wrote it your prospective employer will probably consider your application like this let's write the letter over again correctly this time to make sense even in this short letter we must use one colon six commas eight periods and of course the words now it makes sense first we've used a colon for the salutation in a business letter a period at the end of each declarative sentence other periods after the abbrev ations a comma to separate the items in the date another one to separate the introductory phrase from the rest of the sentence two more to step rate items in the address and by all means commas to help us read this group of names there you have it just a few punctuation marks but what a difference they make in a letter this time it's producing results in Social correspondence Punctuation is equally important Dear Daddy how are you we are fine the cow had a CF yesterday Grandma feels better send me some more candy it is raining the weather is terrible your loving son Tommy well Dad's glad Tommy can write it all and he'll forgive the lack of punctuation in Tommy's letter but in a few years this same young man's letters may be read by more critical correspondents and he may be judged by the letters he writes from the appearance of Tommy's letter he still hasn't found out about punctuation it doesn't take the girls long to find out about Tommy though he writes as a child and that's how he'll be considered just a child but here is a different story a letter from a right guy and what a reception it gets yes punctuation has made the difference for punctuation helps make your writing clear and interesting and helps reflect your own personality learning to punctuate is not hard basically it involves the intelligent application of a few Simple Rules here are the more important members of the punctuation family the period the semicolon question mark the colon exclamation mark quotation marks and the comma now let's see some of their principal uses in how many different ways can a sentence be ended here are three sentences each exactly the same in wording but by using different punctuation marks we show different meanings using a period we make a simple declarative sentence of the first one this is good a question mark at the end of the second sentence makes it a direct question this is good and an exclamation mark at the end of the third sentence makes it an exclamation this is good the comma is a signal for the reader to pause it serves many purposes in our written language here are just a few the comma helps us separate names in a series although sometimes the last comma is not used it separates the day or the month from the year and keeps the figures from running together it separates names of cities and their states the comma sets off the name of the person addressed a comma can completely change the meaning of a sentence study this cartoon for a second and notice the comma in the sentence let's eat Grandma Now by simply removing the comma we get this you will agree that the comma in this case is very important at least to Grandma quotation marks identify ify the title of a poem when used in a sentence their most common use is to set apart and clearly indicate a direct quotation but quotation marks may also change the meaning of a sentence for instance the Indians said Mary scalped General kuster now we'll switch the quotation marks the comma and the Indians and the Indians said Mar scaled General kuster the semicolon is another important member of the punctuation family it separates related independent clauses when they are not joined by and but or a similar conjunction and that is used between items in a series where commas are included the colon follows the salutation in the business letter the colon is also used to show that a list of items follows and that brings us back to the track meet where being on Your Mark is important but certainly no more important than knowing and using properly the punctuation marks that help other people understand what you write whether in your morning newspaper in business correspondence in Social correspondence or in your schoolwork Punctuation is important [Music]