Oh So Many Punctuation Rules

    So punctuation is really confusing to me.  I did learn some cool things about punctuation though.  I didn’t know what a semicolon was used for because I rarely see them.  I use them all the time in computer code to end a section of code, but I just haven’t really seen them in reading.  Now I know that they join two independent clauses and separate list items that contain commas.

    I also learned that you shouldn’t put a comma before the word “because.”  I always did this because that’s what I remember being taught.  Now I know that you don’t need a comma there.

    I didn’t know that you were supposed to put a colon before a quote that has more than one sentence.  I always saw this, but I just thought the writer was trying to make the quote standout.  Now I know that you need a colon before a long quote and a quote that begins the next paragraph.

    As for seeing editing mistakes, I saw this today.  The screen shot is from IO9.com.  The title of the post is “Is the Flash’s Rogues Gallery Already Starting To Team Up?”.

    The writer didn’t put quotes around the movie title “Tomorrowland” and the book title “Before Tomorrowland.”

    There are so many guidelines for commas and quotations, that some of them are a little confusing.  That doesn’t mean they don’t make sense, it’s just that they will be hard to remember.  The reading was very informative, now I need to put the guidelines into practice.