TIP (𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘯.)
1. a small but useful piece of practical advice
─ IN WHICH THE ADMINS GIVE YOU SOME HELP FOR WRITING ANYTHING INVOLVING MYTHOLOGY
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When writing anything - whether it's an original story, a fanfiction, or whatever - puncuation is as important as grammer to make for good story-telling. It's also essential on your path as a writer, not to mention it will attract more readers to your story.
Here I will be describing to you the main punctuation symbols, what they mean, and where/when to apply them to your story.
── AMPERSAND ( & ) This is probably the easiest one of all because an ampersand is just used to represent the word 'and.' It isn't used much when writing, though, so it's not hugely important but it is good to know for future reference.
── EXCLAMATION MARK ( ! ) An exclamation mark is used to indicate strong feelings. For example, if I suddenly starting yelling like this! Or, if your character cried out, "I love you!" after the other character. It's usually used to indicate loud tone volumes, such as shouting, crying out, exclaiming, yelling, screaming, roaring, etc, etc.
── QUESTION MARK ( ? ) This is also a super easy one because I'm sure we all know how to use a question mark, but if you don't, you add it after a question. For example, if your character remarked sarcastically, "Who p*ssed in your cornflakes this morning?", it would be put after the sentence to show it was a question and not a statement.
── ELLIPSIS ( ... ) The ellipsis symbol is used to show a character trailing off or hesitating when they speak. For example: "I think... I... just need... more coffee." That was a character trailing off thought. This is a character hesitating: "It... It was me who threw your toothbrush into the toilet."
── FULL STOP ( . ) Also a pretty easy one. This symbol gives away it's meaning with it's name because, once you finish a sentence, you add a full stop after it to show your readers it's finished, like this.
── HYPEN ( ─ ) A dash is used to emphasize words and/or phrases and summarize ideas. For example; After months of deliberation, the jurors reached a unanimous verdict - guilty. It's basically used to really put emphasize at the end of your sentence if you feel you need to.
── PARENTHESES ( ) Parentheses is just a fancy, dramatic word for brackets. Brackets are used to include information into a sentence that isn't hugely important to the main point. For example; Ms. Marge always wanted people to compliment her on her 'beautiful' hair (it was not beautiful).
It's important to remember that if you're applying informatiom between brackets at the end of your sentence, you put the full stop after the brackets to end it, not before.
It's also just as important to remember that if, you add information between brackets in the middle of a sentence (like this: Alison DiLaurentis (who was a total bitch and overall horrible person) was dead and Rosewood secretly rejoiced.) that you wait until after the brackets, at the very end of your sentence, to put add the full stop to show it's done, otherwise your reads will be totally lost and confused.
── QUOTATION MARKS ( " " ) Used to express speech, quotation marks come in when a character is talking.
