Lesson 3
Mastering Punctuation

Exercise 1
Punctuate correctly, and effectively, with commas:

1.  After working through the year-end assessment we must meet with the stockholders but that won't be for three weeks.

2.  Our security guards are ever watchful and alert and ready for anything.

3.  The meeting sped along with scintillating reports and analyses and presentations and discussions and motivational messages from the president and all five vice presidents and every departmental head.

4.  Our hydrology group monitors area G which has been radionuclide free. [non-restrictive]

5.  The weir control that was designed for low flow has been repaired. [restrictive]

6.  The weir control which was designed for low flow has been repaired. [non-restrictive]

7.  To calculate the flux from year to year we need complete, and accurate, data.

8.  The supervisor could not make up his mind nor could he for that matter make up an excuse.

Punctuate to speed up:

9.  Aside from last week's minor, radiation accident, we have had no trouble in the plant, or throughout the entire, International sweep, of installations.

Punctuate to slow down a little (allow reader some "breathing space" in which to absorb ideas):

10.  Staff members in ERP and ESD have helped identify existing monitoring stations on the island but have not selected sites for the new stations nor helped visiting researchers from our sister lab in the Netherlands to assemble and place their equipment.

Punctuate to slow down a lot (increase the sense of "dragging":

11.  The meeting dragged on with reports and analyses and presentations and discussions and motivational messages from the president and from each of the vice presidents and from every departmental head.

Punctuate to achieve medium emphasis:

12.  First-aid boxes-located as usual to the left of welding stations-must be restocked regularly.

Punctuate to display balance:

13.  It was the best time to invest it was the worst time to invest.

Semicolons
Use semicolons to

1. Link two closely related sentences (especially sentences in cause-effect relationship):

Mercury levels in streams are alarmingly high; swift remedial action is needed.

The new digital cameras are the size of a credit card; wallets will soon bulge with them.

The company offered its stock at half price; consumers swarmed to buy it up.

2. Divide a single, long, main clause into readable chunks:

We took photos in the misty byways of London, the seamy underbelly of Paris, and the hot backstreets of Madrid; in the sprawling slums of Buenos Aires, the shivering outskirts of Lima, and the crowded streets of Mexico City; in the waterways of Hong Kong, the gardens of Kyoto, and the mud-bogged streets of Manila.

3. Divide a long sentence made up of multiple independent clauses:

Some species of animals, such as mink and otter, rank high on the scale of social value; other species, such as raccoon and beaver, fall somewhere around the middle of that scale; still other species, such as carp and skunk, nearly fall off the bottom of the scale.

When you have a string of independent clauses like this, it's always possible simply to come to a full stop (period) at the end of each clause. But sometimes, as in the sample sentence above, you want all the clauses in one sentence: it helps deliver the sense of one idea, one continuous "scale of social value," on which all animals fall.

Exercise 2
Revise the following paragraphs to improve style. Make no changes except in punctuation.

The proposed Energy Recovery Facilities, burn dumps, have been dumped on by Greenpeace, and the Audubon Society, and Citizens for a Cleaner Tennessee, and a truckload of other organizations, yet the fact remains that this proposal is the best one, to come before our legislature. All the other proposals seem based on three premises; that New York has a bottomless treasury, that we are more afraid of air pollution than of land or water pollution, and that most of us are perfectly willing to expand, or to increase the number of, our existing landfills.

But the proposal we're now considering describes a way to dispose of our state's waste which is currently straining our landfills to their limits within budget and without expanding the landfills; expanding the landfills would present its own legal dilemma by the way. It projects the impact on air quality in layman's terms and a good thing, since none of us here are scientists: and it goes on to project the overall minimal impact on animal life in the state with special attention to the species we most value; humans. Finally it crunches heaps of numbers and demonstrates how the proposed facilities will, in time, become economically self supporting. These Energy Recovery Facilities will in short take care of the landfill crisis which is our most immediate problem, they will work within our current budget, which is an absolute necessity and they will eventually prove to be a positive boon to our area's economy and to our prospects for reelection.

A possible revision: The proposed Energy Recovery Facilities (burn dumps) have been "dumped on" by Greenpeace and the Audubon Society and Citizens for a Cleaner Tennessee and a truckload of other organizations-yet the fact remains that this proposal is the best one to come before our legislature. All the other proposals seem based on three premises: that New York has a bottomless treasury; that we are more afraid of air pollution than of land or water pollution; and that most of us are perfectly willing to expand, or to increase the number of, our existing landfills.

But the proposal we're now considering describes a way to dispose of our state's waste-which is currently straining our landfills to their limits-within budget and without expanding the landfills (expanding the landfills would present its own legal dilemma, by the way). It projects the impact on air quality in layman's terms-and a good thing, since none of us here are scientists-and it goes on to project the overall (minimal) impact on animal life in the state, with special attention to the species we most value: humans. Finally, it crunches heaps of numbers and demonstrates how the proposed facilities will in time become economically self-supporting. These Energy Recovery Facilities will, in short, take care of the landfill crisis, which is our most immediate problem; they will work within our current budget, which is an absolute necessity; and they will eventually prove to be a positive boon to our area's economy . . . and to our prospects for re-election.

Congratulations; you're on your way to becoming a master punctuator!