Grammar & Punctuation Guide
Preamble: This guide will be a very immense guide based upon grammar and writing. Using this guide will teach those of you who aren't particularly fine tuned in your grammatical and writing skills. This guide can not only be effective for a stronger knowledge of grammar, but it can also help you in terms of your scholastic work, due to the fact that it will lower the amount of grammatical and writing mistakes within your assigned papers. Don't criticize me if something is spelled incorrectly and say "oh ma gOd thatz ironic bc this is a spellign grammer guide", try writing a 1,200 word guide, it's not that simple.
Definitions
Grammar- (as defined by Merriam-Webster's online dictionary) Is the study of the classes of words, their inflections, and their functions and relations in the sentence.
Writing- (as defined by Merriam-Webster's online dictionary) Is the act or process of one who writes.
Punctuation- (as defined by Merriam-Webster's online dictionary) Is the act or practice of inserting standardized marks or signs in written matter to clarify the meaning and separate structural units; derived from punctuation.
Parts of Speech: Firstly, there are eight specific parts of speech; adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, nouns, verbs, conjunctions, prepositions and interjections.
- Verb- A verb is the part of speech which expresses an action or occurrence. The shortened term for verb in dictionaries and on some papers is "v.".
Example:
- Pronoun- A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun (see noun below). This basically refers to something which is mentioned earlier in the text. For instance if I wrote: They ran for miles without stopping for water. Who's they? They are the marathon runners which were mentions repeatedly throughout the passage.
Example:
- Adverb- Adverbs modify a verb, adjective or other adverb. Adverbs usually tell when, where, or why something happened or will happen.
Example:
- Adjective- These are basically words which are modifies of other things or people within a sentence.
Example:
- Nouns- A noun, in the terms of the everyday world, is a place, person, thing or idea. Inside of nouns there are proper nouns which are nouns which are defined as specific.
Example of a noun:
Example of a proper noun:
- Conjunctions- A conjunction is a word that conjoins two separate parts of a sentence. I'm sure many of you drivers have heard of conjunction because that is where two roads conjoin. Some conjunctions are: or, but and, yet, nor, for, and so.
Example:
- Prepositions- When you were little you might not have been told what a preposition was, you might have just had to learn a song to memorize them. Well, a preposition is a word which describes a specific relationship between words in a sentence.
Example:
- Interjections- These are figures which show some type of expression.
Example:Wow! I just found $8 dollars on the floor and it turns out that it is no one's money, therefor I can keep it.
Punctuation
The Question Mark (?)- A question mark is something which is added to the end of a sentence to indicate that you are asking a question. A question mark can also be inserted to show that you are unsure of something, this can be located mid-sentence.
The Exclamation Mark (!)- The exclamation mark shows some type of powerful feeling. This usually represents some type of excitement or other. This punctuation mark should be inserted at the end of a sentence of phrase.
The Comma (,)- You can use the comma in a few separate ways. The citation comma is used when you are listing multiple things, ie. places.
Example:
- When I went to the baseball game everyone was there including Mark, Alex, Rodrigo and Mike. These are all great players and can play for my team any day of the week.
- My best friend, I would say, is one of the most outstanding members of the classroom. He never causes any problems and usually gets the best grades out of everyone.
The Hyphen (-)- It can be used to show, when writing a paper, that the word wasn't able to fit therefor a hyphen is added to show a break in the text, but split the word up into it's two parts which you can derive. For example do not split up "understand" like "unders-tand", split it up like "under-stand". The hyphen can also be used to make things easily comprehended. For example "landowners" or "land-owners". Both are correct, it's far easier to read if the word is hyphenated.
Quotations (" ")- These are used to state something which someone said directly or to state a direct quote from a specific piece of work, otherwise known as a citation.
Capital Letters (A)- Capital letters should be used when writing a specific person, place or thing. An example would be Adolf Hitler, his name becomes capitalized. You should also always use a capital at the beginning of a sentence.
The Colon ( : )- The colon is mostly used to indicate an elaboration of a specific point which was mentioned before the usage of the colon.
Example:
It can also be used when providing or listing more than one of something.
Example:
The Semicolon ( ; )- The semicolon is used mainly to conjoin two separate sentences into one sentence in it's entirety. They are usually used if the sentence have closely related topics because then there is no need for a second sentence. You would say something such as this: "Me and my friend chilled all the time. We had a great summer; we had a great winter."
Thanks for reading my guide. If you have any reading or writing questions feel free to ask.
