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Hi everyone!
Today we're going to talk about punctuation.
Punctuation is the name for specific kinds of marks used in writing.
When you are speaking, you can use pauses or stops, and change your tone of voice to
help the listener understand.
When you are writing, you can use punctuation to do the same thing.
Punctuation can help us when we read to understand what is written correctly.
Let's learn about some of the more common types of punctuation!
First, let's talk about periods.
A period is a dot that marks the end of a sentence.
Periods are the most common way to end a sentence, because they are used to end any sentence
that isn't a question or an exclamation.
An exclamation will end with an exclamation point.
Exclamation points are used to show strong feelings, like excitement, or show that something
is being said loudly.
Question marks are easy to understand: they belong at the end of questions.
Any time you have a question, you end it with a question mark.
Got it?
Commas can be used in many places.
They are used to indicate a pause.
Let's see some of the places a comma should be used!
Commas should be used to separate three or more items in a list.
They are also used to separate compound sentences - two complete sentences connected by a conjunction
like and, but, and or.
Commas are used after introductory words, clauses, or phases to set them apart from
the main sentence.
You should also use commas to separate the name of a city from its country or state,
and to set apart the day of the week or month when writing a date.
Finally, commas are used to separate quotations from the rest of a sentence.
A quotation is something that someone else has said or written.
Quotation marks are used at the beginning and end of a sentence or phrase to show that
it is being written exactly the way it was written or said originally.
The last punctuation mark we are going to talk about today is the apostrophe.
Apostrophes can be used in a contraction to show that there are missing letters.
Apostrophes are also used to show possession, or that something belongs to someone.
There are still more types of punctuation to learn about, but I hope this helped you
to understand how to use basic punctuation marks.
Goodbye till next time!