Let's talk about punctuation

Hey everybody! welcome to another Clive's English Corner post!

In this chapter, we will discuss two more punctuation marks that are necessary to become a great writer.

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: Colon.

When it comes to this one, its use is not as mysterious as its cousin, the semicolon. It is pretty safe to say that most people know at least one of its uses pretty well. However, learning how to apply it by heart can result in pretty interesting narrative effects. Let's check out the different uses.

Introducing a list is probably the colon's most well know use. Whenever you want to start naming a list of items use a colon before it. Let's take a look at some examples.

I'm not too picky when it comes to pets; in fact, I like: dogs, cats, parrots, hamsters, etc.

There are some "ultrabooks" that cannot be used for demanding tasks, so they are mostly used for: word processing, excel sheets, light gaming, and media consumption.

Whenever you two clauses and the latter explains the previous one, use a colon to separate them. Shall we check out some examples?

Almost all successful people did not make it overnight: most of them made progress slowly and steadily until they made it to the top.

The educational system worldwide has a critical flaw: it treats individuals like assembly line products, and it ignores each one's unique talents.

There is one more use that we will discuss once we cover the "quotation marks/inverted commas"

" "/ ' ' Quotation marks/ Inverted commas

These are also punctuation marks that are not too difficult to grasp, fortunately. Nonetheless, we will explore their use. It is important to note; double quotation marks are quite commonplace in American English writing whereas the simple inverted commas are more usual in British English. It is important to remember that if there is a use of someone else's words within a citation, you may use both the simple and double quotation marks to make that distinction.

Say you want to start taking someone else's words exactly as they stated them; then, you must use these marks right at the beginning and end of this statement. Also, you may use a colon to precede this sentence. Here is a couple of examples:

One of my favorite Ayn Rand quotes is: "we are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission."

The keynote speaker started by saying, "One of my favorite Linus Torvalds quotes is: 'software is like sex: it is better when it is free.' Don't you agree?" The entire audience started laughing.

Quotation marks come in handy when you want to make sure your reader knows the specific name of an item you are discussing or a phrase. For example:

The movie, "Lord of The Rings," was granted several academy awards.

That's it for now! In the next chapter we will wrap up the "let's talk about punctuation" series, so make sure you learn and master the ones presented in these few chapters and come back for more.

See you next time!