𝐒𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠ᴮᵒᵒᵏ ᴴᵉˡᵖ

ɪɪ. ᴘᴜɴᴄᴛᴜᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ɪꜱ ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪꜱ ᴍᴇᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴜꜱᴇᴅ, ɴᴏᴛ ᴅɪꜱᴄᴀʀᴅᴇᴅ

Here's what I humbly beg of you: USE PUNCTUATION! 

My head is hurting because I just came across a story with no punctuation whatsoever. I won't be naming it, but here's what I want to tell you about using punctuation. 

IT IS IMPORTANT. Without proper punctuation, your story is, in essence, a mess of words that will only serve to make your reader get a migraine. 

I'm sorry that I'm so rude and forward with this, but it's either this or tearing the rest of my hair out, and I choose this. 

Let's just cover the uses of all the punctuation one by one, ok? And please, pay attention to the English class next time. 

1. The Exclamation Mark ( ! ): Before we go on to the use of this, let me tell you: This mark sticks out like a sore thumb in the case of formal writing, so avoid using it in your stories. If you use them a lot, your work will look like it's written by a child. Use this in dialogues, when your character expresses particularly strong emotions, or when they're screaming or crying. They can also be used to emphasize a point. If you've ever seen a child throwing a tantrum, you will know that they emphasize their point by an exclamation (  they're not writing, so we won't use the word 'mark' here ). 

2. The Hyphen ( - ): The hyphen can be used in many ways. Here are some of them:

a. The most obvious would be to hyphenate a name, for example, 'Mrs. Brown-Green.'

b. Another way you can use this is when you're teaching the spelling of a particular word, like saying, 'h-e-l-l-o spells hello!' 

c. Sometimes, the hyphen is used to prevent the doubling of vowels, like 'semi-independent' or 're-elect'. 

d. Another reason I'm giving you is to prevent the misreading of words, for instance 're-collect' and 'recollect'. 

e. A hyphen may also be used to add a prefix to a capitalized word. 

f. The final reason I'm giving you is using it in dialogue, to show stuttering or stammering. 

3. The Colon ( : ): 

a. Giving the readers a list that is not in the flow of a sentence. For instance, She took four clubs in High School: Drama, Technology, Music, and Dance. 

b. This one's a bit more complicated to understand. A colon is also used to join two independent clauses ( phrases ) when the second one explains the first. You can use it in the following way- "I have no time to go out tonight: I have school in the morning."

c. For emphasis, you can use a colon before the end of the sentence of the paragraph to emphasize a single word or clause. You can also use an em dash here, which is this '—' dash. 

d. Colons are also used to tell time, and in ratios. 

4. The Semi-Colon ( ; ): 

For starters, the semi-colon isn't used a lot, so here are a few uses of this particular punctuation. 

a. To link two independent clauses in a single sentence. 

b. In a long list where there are too many things to be separated by commas. 

I think that's all, you'll maybe get another update today. I hope this helped, and if you ever need the use of any other punctuation, GOOGLE it.