Punctuation, Part 1

In this post I will be examining three different uses of punctuation and how to use them. I will also be talking about how it helped me and what I learned in each section.

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Comma

In the comma section, I learned that the comma is one of the most useful, as well as the easiest punctuation to misuse.  I often use a lot of commas in my sentences because of the amount of information I like to cram into one sentence. For me, the most useful parts were the sections on restrictive and nonrestrictive elements as well as the listing sections. Since I like to use a lot of descriptive words, phrases and other elements to describe things both of these sections helped with those. In the restrictive sections the most important parts for me was the fact in distinguishing between what need to be separated with a comma-the restrictive-and those that do not-the non restrictive.

Apostrophe

For the apostrophe section the most useful information for me was the fact that the joint possession and the part on misuses of apostrophes. In the joint section I have always had the problem of where to put the possession when talking about several different nouns. In this section I figured out that it comes at the very end not after each one of the nouns. I also found out from this section that the most common misuse of apostrophes is when nouns are not possessive which I am guilty of every now and again.

Quotations

I thought this was one of the most important sections for this paper because of the amount of necessary evidence that we need to use. I found that the most useful parts of these sections was the punctuation placements and the section on quotes within quotes. I have never really learned any of the conventions of using quotation marks so the placement of periods always confused me because of the MLA puts the period after the citation and other styles put it in the quotation. In this case the fact that I put the period inside the quote except for MLA citation helped me tremendously. I also had never learned the style for quoting a quote that was quoted, and the use of single quotation marks described in the book helped me do just that.

Reflection

I revised both Casey and Hallye's drafts. Hallye used quotation marks superbly when titling articles and such but like me fell into the trap of punctuation mistakes when quoting. One example of this was when Hallye said, "he claims he worries the decision is 'a harbinger of the new arbitrariness of rules in Russia...like what happened in the obscenity rulings that closed down a lot of theater plays'. ." and places the period outside of the quotation. While this is a small detail it is important to take note of. For Casey, I found that she tended to be more hesitant in using commas but when she did, she did a very good job at it like when she says, "This article was both in print and online, which means a broader audience was targeted than if only one medium was used.". All in all both drafts were good (while one was incomplete) but good ideas in both.