10 марта состоится тренинг по английскому языку на тему Punctuation in EnglishYou use punctuation marks to structure and organize your writing. The most common of these are the period (or full stop in British English), the comma, the exclamation mark, the question mark, the colon and semi-colon, the quote, the apostrophe, the hyphen and dash, and parentheses and brackets. Capital letters are also used to help us organize meaning and to structure the sense of our writing. You can quickly see why punctuation is important if you try and read this sentence which has no punctuation at all: perhaps you don't always need to use commas periods colons etc to make sentences clear when i am in a hurry tired cold lazy or angry i sometimes leave out punctuation marks grammar is stupid i can write without it and don't need it my uncle Harry once said he was not very clever and i never understood a word he wrote to me I think ill learn some punctuation not too much enough to write to Uncle Harry he needs some help. Now let's see if punctuation it makes a difference!
Perhaps you don't always need to use commas, periods, colons etc. to make sentences clear. When I am in a hurry, tired, cold, lazy, or angry I sometimes leave out punctuation marks. "Grammar is stupid! I can write without it and don't need it." my uncle Harry once said. He was not very clever and I never understood a word he wrote to me. I think I'll learn some punctuation - not too much, enough to write to Uncle Harry. He needs some help! Use the punctuation section to learn how to make your English clearer and better organized. The functions of punctuation Punctuation marks date back to at least the fifth century BC, when the Greeks began to use marks to show where there were breaks between sentences and parts of sentences. At that time there were only capital letters, and no spaces were made between words - so it's easy to see that reading a text without punctuation must have been quite confusing! Showing divisions in a text remains the main function of punctuation and of textual features that are often considered part of the punctuation system, such as the use of capital letters. White spaces show the breaks between words. Full stops and capital letters show the breaks between sentences, while commas and other marks show divisions within sentences. Breaks between lines and indentation of new lines show where new paragraphs begin.
The main purpose is to prevent confusion, to make the text easier to read. At one time, there was considerable debate as to whether punctuation in English should be based on the places where one should pause while reading aloud, or on grammar. Of course, grammatical divisions and pauses for breath often fall in the same places, but not always. The debate was won by those who favoured using punctuation to mark grammatical divisions. It's very important to remember this; you can't decide how to punctuate a text just by reading it aloud. You can't punctuate in English without thinking about grammar. A more modern function of punctuation is to add an extra element of meaning. Thus, a question mark indicates that something is a question, even if there is nothing in the grammatical form of the words to indicate this, e.g. John likes whisky? While the basic rules of punctuation are now quite firmly established, there are quite a lot of minor differences in usage, particularly between Britain and the United States, and the system is also subject to changes in fashion. For example, abbreviations such as US (United States) may also be written U.S.. Some people might see the second full stop at the end of the preceding sentence as being unnecessarily 'fussy' (one full stop for the abbreviation, one for the end of the sentence). The important thing is to be consistent in your own writing as far as these options go. If you are writing for publication, the publisher will probably give you some guidelines to follow, and will 'tidy up' anything which is inconsistent with the 'house style'. The modern trend is towards less use of punctuation marks where possible. However, the phrase 'where possible' is important! Sometimes the rules of punctuation usage state that you must use, for example, a comma in a particular place, and you cannot leave it out on the grounds that 'less punctuation is better'. Sometimes, too, the use of a comma may be optional from a technical point of view, but it can still make it easier for a reader to understand what you want to say.
Presenter: Dmitry Chernyshov, PhD Date and time: 10.03.2007, Saturday, at 12:00. Everyone is welcome! |