Last week we discussed how to use commas, semi-colons, and colons. However, there are still more punctuation marks that seem to be misused, misunderstood, or underused altogether. Apostrophes, dashes, and parentheses change the meaning or offer stylistic flare in your writing.
We’ll start with apostrophes. One of the biggest mistakes happens with “its” versus “it’s.” “Its” indicates possession — “its arms were long.” “It’s” is a contraction of “it is.” Obviously, you wouldn’t say “it is arms were long,” so the apostrophe clarifies meaning immediately. However, I see students using apostrophes when they mean to pluralize a word. Never use an apostrophe to indicate there are more than one of an item! If you are talking about a person or item with an “s” at the end of a name, you can either put the apostrophe after the “s” by itself or add an apostrophe and an “s” to indicate possession.
Moving onto dashes, there are actual two types of dashes used in writing. The “n” dash is your standard hyphen. Use an “n” dash to hyphenate words, such as “mother-in-law.” The “em” dash is a stylistic technique that can indicate emphasis and sometimes take the place of commas, semi-colons, and colons. The information being emphasized by the usage of an “em” dash is usually for dramatic effect, and the sentence could stand alone without that information. I use “em” dashes quite frequently — they are delightful!
Finally, parentheses can be used for in-text citations, emphasis, or tangents. Most commonly, you will see parentheses after a direct quotation, although in-text citations also indicate the author paraphrased another source. Before the “em” dash rose to prominence, parentheses added emphasis and stylistic flare (because who doesn’t love a little flare). In the case of tangents, the author might want to make a notation that might derail the text’s purpose while still getting the reader thinking beyond the present conversation (for example, to discuss common spelling mistakes).
While it seems we’ve covered all the punctuation that could possibly exist, we still haven’t covered the ellipsis, brackets, or quotation marks. Check back next week for the last post of the punctuation series!
