By: Jane Sumerset
Submitted: 2010-04-24 00:46:09 | Word Count: 515
Commas and semi colon may often confuse us all the time. A lot of people always found themselves complaining about it as it affects their writing greatly. It is not that good if you commit a lot of writing mistakes especially for the part of commas and semi colons.
You may have difficulties of using them and that’s because they have a little bit the same uses when they are applied in sentence writing. Even if you are going to use a word processor that automatically detects any grammatical and spelling errors, once you place a lot of commas in your phrases and words within your sentence, there are instance where instead of using commas for that phrase, you’ve got to use semi colons and we are not aware about that.
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To think that we also wonder why we need to use semi colons in one of our phrases instead of commas? Say, what’s the difference between them. Or in other words, how and when are we going to use these kinds of punctuation marks in our sentences. Any ideas? It is really important to know the basics and study a lot of stuffs regarding these issues.
That’s why we need to read for more information, remember it always and apply it into our actual writing task. That’s pretty much tiring for most beginners but that’s the only way to do it. If you need to correct your mistakes, then learn from it. Know the ways and techniques. Identify your problem first and then you are now heading to the right track.
Still struggling with the use of commas and semicolons? Some people really just never catch on, even after reading through the guidelines over and over. If you count yourself among those who continually have a hard time with these two punctuations, here’s an idea:
Stop memorizing the rules.
Yep, just quit on it. If it hasn’t stuck after five or six times of trying (and hoping to catch mistakes with a writing correction software), it might be prudent to try something else. Rather than give it one more go doing the same thing over, how about you try getting these punctuations right by getting a feel for them?
Let’s say you’ve written a paragraph and are now trying to figure out proper placement for commas and semicolons. Read it aloud in a conversational tone, noting where you would normally pause if you were narrating it to an audience. Those pauses indicate where the punctuations should appear.
• If it’s a short pause, you probably need to add a comma.
• If it’s a long pause, but not quite a full stop (as a period will require), you probably need a semicolon; just make sure that the clause following the semicolon is a statement that can stand on its own.
• If you wrote down a comma in a section where it wouldn’t make sense to pause when you’re reading it aloud, remove it; the punctuation only makes the sentence difficult to read.
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