Hello and welcome to Basic Punctuation.
In this video, you will learn about three main types of sentences and when to use a
period, an exclamation mark, or question mark to end those sentences.
Punctuation marks are important for both reading and writing.
When you read, punctuation marks give you hints as to when a thought is complete,
when it is a list, or when someone is speaking.
You want to use punctuation when you write because you're helping your reader
understand the very same thing.
Let’s start with the basics.
There are three main types of sentences, and each type of sentence ends
with a special type of punctuation.
We’ll look at these three types of sentences separately.
They are: a statement sentence, a question, and an exclamatory sentence.
We’ll start with the statement sentence, which is a very common type of sentence.
We make statements all the time, for example, “I am a girl.”
This is a sentence which makes a statement about me.
Another example is, “The man crossed the street with his dog.”
This is a statement about what the man and the dog are doing.
The type of punctuation used at the end of the statement is called a period.
As you can see, there is a dot at the end of this sentence.
The dot is the symbol for a period.
Let’s practice it.
In this sentence, where would you place the period?
Since this is a declarative sentence, or a statement, you would place the period
right here, at the end of the sentence.
“We are going to take the bus today.”
We are stating that we will take the bus instead of walk today.
Sometimes sentences are questions.
We ask a question when we want to know something that we don’t have the answer to.
When we ask a question, we use another symbol at the end of the sentence to let readers
know that we expect an answer.
This is the symbol that we use. It is called a question mark.
Here is a tip about when to use the question mark at the end of a sentence.
Questions often begin with the words: who, what, where, when, why, how.
But, sometimes they also begin with: do you, will you, should I,
and some other question starters like these.
Let’s practice using a question mark.
Look at the first sentence.
Where will you add the question mark?
Since this is a question, end it with a question mark like this.
I hope that you do like to learn. Do you?
What about the second question?
If you’re looking for your sweater, you’ll ask your sister about where it might be.
Where would the question mark go?
That's right!
Again, a question mark is placed after the question is asked, here at the end.
You now know that sentences can be statements or they can be questions.
There is another type of sentence.
This is a sentence we might use if we are excited about something or are exclaiming something.
It is called an exclamatory sentence, and this is the symbol that we use
at the end of an exclamatory sentence.
It is called an exclamation mark.
Some exclamatory words we often use are:
wow! yeah! oh! hurray! whoa! or uh-oh!
Here are a couple of exclamatory sentences.
Do you know where the exclamation mark should go in this first sentence?
Well, if you’re excited after winning a race, you would be exclaiming that you won
to everyone you know, so you’ll place an exclamation mark at the end of this sentence.
What about this sentence?
If you're warning your brother not to touch your school work,
you’ll probably be exclaiming that too.
So, you’ll place an exclamation mark at the end of this sentence like so.
There you have it, three types of sentences and three types of end punctuation.
Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoyed this video.
Make sure to practice what you learn with our fun games on
Always Icecream and Clever Dragons, and I will see you next time.