There’s nothing worse than seeing an email that violates the rules of punctuation. It’s okay if you’re an immigrant, but most of us were born here. Here are some rules to go by.
Single space after a period – older people were taught to leave two spaces because of typewriters. That’s over—now, it’s just one.
Contractions – contractions are words like I’m, we’ll, they’re, you’ve, let’s, and shouldn’t. Use them all the time. Write “it’s” instead of “it is” and “you’re” instead of “you are.” It’s a common mistake because we’re not all great typers. So many of us have to reread and edit everything.
Apostrophes – denote ownership (e.g., John’s book) or are for contractions. They don’t make something plural. For example it’s the 1970s, not the 1970’s. The only exception is when you say A’s and B’s, because without the apostrophe it would be, As.
Italics – italics are for emphasis. Many times we use exclamation marks or quotations instead, but that’s wrong. Exclamation marks indicate that someone is exclaiming something (e.g., Billy said, “Hey, look out!”). Quotes identify dialog (e.g., Billy said, “Hey, look out!”).
- Italics are also used for naming works of art like books, movies, albums, and plays. For example, my favourite board game is Funny You Should Ask.
- Quotations are also used for sarcasm. For example, the product was supposed to last “forever.”
Bold and underlining – nobody uses them anymore. Use italics for emphasis.
Periods and parentheses – anything inside of parentheses can be completely removed and the sentence should still make sense. If the whole sentence is in parentheses, then the period goes inside. Otherwise, it’s after (because you still need a period).
- Some people call parentheses, brackets. These are brackets [ ] and these are parentheses ( ). Brackets are used in mathematics.
Another key to better writing is to eliminate unnecessary words. We’ll leave that and the fact you should write out numbers less than 10 for another time.