Punctuation

• Capital Letters
• Full Stops
• Commas
• Semicolons
• Colons
• Ellipsis

Commas

The comma ( , ) is a very popular punctuation mark. However, because "too many commas make writing choppy; too few create misunderstanding" (Venolia, 1995:14), we need to be careful with the usage of commas. Here are the ways commas are used:

	for separating items in a series;
	between coordinate adjectives not joined by and (c.f. Adjectives);
	to indicate the boundary of independent clauses that are joined by the conjunctions and, but, for, nor, or, so and yet (Venolia, 1995:14);
	for separating a dependent clause that comes before an independent clause;
	to separate sentence elements for purposes of emphasis or clarity;
	in the writing of direct speech;
	not to replace conjunctions in the joining of two or more independent clauses (c.f. Run-On Sentences);
	not used interchangeably with the semicolon;
	not to separate an independent clause and a dependent clause when the former comes first.