LANGUAGE MASTERCLASS
Punctuation You May Be Getting Wrong
Avoid looking foolish in work reports, essays, emails and more.
A lot of people can overlook poor punctuation. “As long as I can understand it,” they might say, “I don’t really mind.”
Others do care, however.
And some of those are people who you work with, or who are in a position to judge your competence. Perhaps they’re even the person who might offer you a job one day.
All in all, inaccurate punctuation can make a massive difference to how at least some colleagues, bosses, and clients will perceive you. At best, these errors are going to make you look a bit foolish. At worst, they may mean that you miss out on a new role or a promotion.
What is punctuation for?
Punctuation is, ultimately, about clarifying the meaning and intent of the language.
If you are an author like me, you can probably leave some of this to an editor or proofreader, but even then, it looks bad to make basic mistakes, and it can obscure the meaning of what you are trying to say.
Do you really want people to cringe when they read your emails?
If you want to avoid these basic errors, read on:
1. Misplaced apostrophes
The apostrophe has quite simple rules, and they shouldn’t be too hard to follow. However, apostrophes are very commonly misused and misplaced!
Do not randomly sprinkle in apostrophes to anything that happens to have the letter s at the end, such as a plural, verb, or name:
T̶w̶o̶ ̶c̶u̶p̶’̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶f̶f̶e̶e̶,̶ ̶p̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶.̶
M̶y̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶l̶w̶a̶y̶s̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶p̶’̶s̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶h̶o̶m̶e̶w̶o̶r̶k̶.̶
M̶y̶ ̶t̶e̶a̶c̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶c̶a̶l̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶M̶r̶ ̶J̶o̶n̶e̶’̶s̶.̶
Instead, their most common use is to show possession:
You ate Jay’s avocado.
Our dog’s kennel is lilac.
This dentist’s lasagne recipe is famous worldwide.
These sentences all indicate that one thing/person owns, possesses, or is otherwise connected to the other.
As you can see above, the possessive apostrophe typically appears after the name or noun, and before the letter s, as in “dog’s”.
However, if you are dealing with ownership that is shared so that the first noun is plural, the apostrophe moves to after the s, as follows:
The lawyers’ changing room is locked.
This is true regardless of whether the noun afterward (in this case “changing room”) is plural or not.
More confusingly, an apostrophe after the s is sometimes used if the first noun or name ends with a letter s, as in the example below. However, this is a matter of style. Either way, would be considered to be correct:
Dr Jones’ hairstyle is famous around campus.
Dr Jones’s hairstyle is famous around campus.
This means that in everyday use, you can pick whichever one of the above versions you prefer (something that is pretty unusual in punctuation!). In formal writing, you should consult an editor or style guide.
The only other use of an apostrophe is in a contracted word, such as can’t or won’t.
My main piece of advice here is to follow conventions! Don’t invent your own contractions, and check if you are unsure. I had a colleague who used math (the British English equivalent of math) on the basis that it’s an abbreviation of mathematics. That might be historically true, but the convention nowadays is that the term does not include an apostrophe.
2. Its vs. it’s
This is another issue that causes a massive cringe when you notice it being used wrongly!
A confession — I did it myself for years as a student before I learned the rule. It would be easy to assume, following the apostrophe rule above, that you should put an apostrophe for a possessive, to indicate that something “belongs to it”.
However, that rule doesn’t apply to possessive pronouns, such as its, his, her, our:
This is our penguin.
This is her penguin.
That penguin is ours.
These are treated as individual words that don’t need a possessive added to them because they already imply possession.
You therefore only use an apostrophe in “it’s” if it is a contraction and short for it is.
It’s a beautiful poem.
Really, it’s not that hard a rule to follow.
And that’s the rule!
3. Commas
Commas are kind of a nuisance, as their use depends a lot on style. This makes it harder to suggest absolute rules about when to use them. Often, people appear to have been told things like “you must use a comma before a conjunction”, when actually, it depends a lot on context.
Therefore, I’ll firstly refer back to my earlier point — this is about meaning. Is a comma necessary for clarity? If so, one should be included in the sentence. This might be the case where conjunctions such as ‘and’ are used:
I handed her my overdue library book, and my life continued as normal.
I̶ ̶h̶a̶n̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶d̶u̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶b̶r̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶i̶n̶u̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶r̶m̶a̶l̶.̶
The lack of a comma makes the second version of the sentence less clear, because the reader comes to the words “…my overdue library book and my life…” and it sounds like the life is being handed over together with the book!
True, it is easy enough to figure out what happens, but as a writer, you want to avoid even momentary confusion. It’s best if readers don’t have to track back to figure out what a sentence is trying to say.
One other issue is the relative clause. Here, the presence or absence of a comma can completely change the meaning of a statement. Neither of the following sentences is wrong, but they mean different things:
My friend, who was in the army, enjoys roleplaying games.
My friend who was in the army enjoys roleplaying games.
In the first example, the implication is that the speaker only has one friend, and this person was in the army. In the second example, the speaker is using the phrase “who was in the army” to specify which one of their friends they are referring to.
Want to know more about comma usage? Check out this story by about the Oxford comma by Shaq Cheris.
4. Dashes and hyphens
Okay, one more… and I confess, this is more of a personal annoyance than a major issue for your career! Most people won’t notice you are getting it wrong, and many of my colleagues do so on a regular basis.
First of all, what are dashes and hyphens?
Hyphens are short bars that link two words or a prefix and a word, like this:
It was a really well-planned LitRPG novel.
They are the same as the minus key on your keyboard, just along from the number zero.
Dashes are longer on the page. The are often used to separate a phrase, similar to brackets/parentheses:
My friend Jay — yeah, the dude whose avocado you ate — is at the door.
In formal writing, such as in essays, it is probably best to use parentheses, but dashes are often preferred in creative writing. They can make the prose seem faster-paced (there’s another hyphen!) and more immediate.
You also don’t have to include two dashes — sometimes one is enough (as in this sentence).
One other use of the dash is to separate a set of numbers:
It’s all there in lines 89–92.
In both of the examples below, many people might choose to use a hyphen, but they should be using dashes:
C̶h̶e̶c̶k̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶p̶a̶g̶e̶s̶ ̶3̶4̶-̶3̶9̶.̶
T̶h̶e̶ ̶h̶o̶r̶s̶e̶̶ -̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶b̶r̶e̶d̶ -̶ ̶w̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶a̶c̶e̶ ̶e̶a̶s̶i̶l̶y̶.̶
(Medium autocorrects a hyphen to a dash in the sentences above, so at least you’re not making those mistakes here! I had to type them elsewhere to show you those examples 😄 ).
And if you are wondering how the heck to type a dash on your keyboard, it’s ctrl+the hyphen key on a PC, and alt+the hyphen key on a mac.
However, a lot of software will enter these automatically if you type two hyphens in a row.
Try it!
The plot thickens just a little when you find out that there are two different types of dash… In fact, for simplicity, you can always use the shorter n-dash, but remember not to use spaces around it in a number range (e.g. 100–102) but to do so with parenthetical phrases. Alternatively, you can use the longer m-dash, in parenthetical phrases, but this time do not include spaces (and again, Medium appears to auto-correct to this — you can see it in the example in this sentence!).
Check out my guide on punctuating and formatting written direct speech here.
I hope these tips help you to avoid those awkward mistakes. All the best with all of your writing!
p.s. you should get my posts direct to your inbox. Do that here! Also, if you’d like to experience Medium yourself, consider supporting me and thousands of other writers by signing up for a membership. It only costs $5 per month, it genuinely supports writers, and you have the chance to make serious money with your own writing as well! By signing up with this link, you’ll support me directly with a portion of your fee, it won’t cost you extra. If you do so, thank you so very much!
