Blok Jeleg: Punctuation Marks: Introduction

Introduction

Academic writing is not a new stuff for us. As a college student, sometimes we need to make an academic writing. But many students do not find it easy to write up their academic work into an acceptable form. One of the difficulties is how to write down punctuation marks, which many people assume that it is easy. In academic writing, we cannot deny that punctuation mark is also very important, but many people think that they do not need to learn about it. The using of punctuation marks looks quite simple and easy, but in the fact many people get much error in it. It means that many people do not understand well about punctuation marks, especially for the people who live in a country which English is only a foreign language like in Indonesia. There are many differences between the using punctuation mark in Indonesian writing and English writing, but many people think that both of them are same at all. So, this paper will explain about the kinds of punctuation mark and when/how to use it.

“Punctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud” (Wikipedia, 2007). They are: full stop, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, slash, hyphen, dash, quotation marks, colon, semicolon, apostrophe, and brackets.

“One of the functions of punctuation marks is to emphasize the meaning. When we speak, we use all kinds of speaking style to emphasize the meaning to the audience” (Phytian, 2012). We raise or lower our voice, stop for a while or a long time, speak fast or slowly, speak loudly or softly, and emphasize a word than the other words. We also emphasize the meaning with our body language, mimicry or expression, signal, and so on.

Unfortunately, when we write we cannot use the emphasizing actions like we use when we speak. Writing conveys meaning through words, phrases, and punctuation alone. If it is used correctly, it will make the meaning of the writing clearer for the audience. For example, "woman, without her man, is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of men) and "woman: without her, man is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of women) have greatly different meanings, as do "eats shoots and leaves" (to mean "consumes plant growths") and "eats, shoots and leaves" (to mean "eats firstly, fires a weapon secondly, and leaves the scene thirdly").

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1. Full Stop

2. Question Mark

3. Exclamation Mark

4. Comma

5. Quotation Mark

6. Apostrophe

7. Brackets

8. Colon

9. Semicolon

10. Hyphen

11. Dash