English Home Language
Punctuation
Capital letters:
Sentences always start with capital letters
Proper Nouns and Proper Adjectives
Main words in titles of books, films or plays
First word in direct speech
Full Stops:
Indicates the end of a sentence
After certain abbreviations
Commas:
Separate word or phrases
Indicate where one phrase or clause ends or begins
Additional information that could have been inserted in brackets
Before and after words such as however and nevertheless
Introductory words or phrases are separated from the rest
Semi-colons:
Indicates opposite ideas
Join two main clauses where no conjunctions
Replaced by full stop or conjunctions
Long pause that balances two important ideas
Colons:
Introduces a quotation
In script writing a colon follows
Indicates a list, explanation or idea follows
Question marks:
Rhetorical questions
Indicates the end of a question
Exclamation marks:
Follow exclamations or intersections
Used to accentuate and strengthen the tone of the statement
Used after sentences containing strong emotions
Quotation marks:
Direct speech
To quote someone’s words
Single quotation marks were used to indicate titles of books but these titles are now mostly underlined
To excuse oneself for using slang
Indicates metaphoric usage
, Parenthesis (brackets):
Can use commas of dashes in its place
Usually an explanation or aside or information
Hyphen:
Links prefixes to words or link to words to form compound words
Differentiate meanings
Words that can’t be completed in one line
When two words are joined by the ending vowel and beginning vowel is the same
Dash:
Serve similar purpose to a comma, colon or semi-colon
Give additional information
Separates a comment or afterthought from the rest of the sentence
Creates a dramatic pause
Bullets:
Modern communication
Ellipsis:
Indicate that a sentence is incomplete
Can guess the meaning from the content
Italics:
Used to highlight or emphasize certain words
Computer editing
Parts of speech
Nouns
A noun is a naming word
Common nouns are names given to ordinary objects
Proper nouns always begin with a capital letter and it names of people, places, things
Abstract nouns refers to something that we cannot see, touch, measure (often an emotion )
Collective nouns is the name of a collection or group
Pronouns
The pronoun takes the place of a noun
Personal pronoun refers to people or things= I, you, she…
Possessive pronoun indicates ownership= hers, mine…
Reflexive pronoun reflect back to the noun or the pronoun= himself, herself…
Interrogative pronoun ask questions= who, where, what…
Demonstrative pronouns point out a specific person or thing= this, that, there…
Indefinite pronoun refers to people or things in a general way= you, one, anyone…
Relative pronoun preform the functions of conjunctions by joining one part of a sentence to another=
who, whom..
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