Punctuation, Part 1

Topic 1: The Comma

I have been trying to work on my use of commas for quite a while. I find the rules behind them to be quite nebulous so this section was quite helpful. I already have a good idea of how to use commas, but that understanding is based on my own feeling of how a sentence sounds. One thing I often fail to do is place a comma after an introductory phrase. Placing commas in those types of sentences often felt unnatural, but now I understand why they are necessary to organize my writing and communicate ideas clearly.

Topic 2: Semicolon

This topic was interesting to me because in some of my recent writings I have been trying to incorporate the semicolon more and more. I already knew that it links two independent clauses, but wanted to make sure my uses were correct grammatically. This section confirmed my understanding of semicolons and also reminded me of some of the other uses of semicolons; in particular,  the section on the use of a semicolon when formatting a list with elements that have commas already was a helpful reminder of this convention.

Topic 3: Quotation Marks

Quotation marks are not particularly difficult idea to me and their rules are not as complex as the other two topics; however, their apparent lack of difficulty is exactly why I wanted to read this section. I thought that maybe there would be some information about quotations that I may not know yet. Mostly I already had a strong understanding of the contents of this section. I did, however, learn something about using block quotes. It was a good reminder that whenever quoting something that goes longer than four lines, it is necessary to create a block quote in your text.

Reflection:

After the peer review process, I learned and was reminded about some important punctuation ideas. From Jason's, I learned that it is quite easy to start a sentence as a dependent clause, but then get lost in the words and have it end as an independent clause. This then allowed him to use a semicolon incorrectly to link an independent clause: "Though there are instances of veteran jockeys, often times highly publicized, appearing to abuse the crop; it is often the newer jockeys that are being penalized for misuse." I see why this semicolon was used, but it is used incorrectly. It is an important lesson on how to properly use this punctuation.

Nicole's draft reminded me of a use of quotation marks. She writes, "Computers at NASA and the U.S. Energy Department were attacked by a “WANK” worm, “Worms Against Nuclear Killers.” It was the second worm of its kind, but the first worm that held a political agenda." Here she used the quotations to document the unusual use of a word. In this case "WANK" is quite unusual in this sentence, so it was effective for her to place this term in quotations to denote the word's usage as unusual in this context. This is a good lesson on one of the many uses of quotation marks.