Punctuation, Part 1

In this post, I will review rules regarding punctuation.

Lim, Walter "This is so funny, yet morbidly true. Indeed, punctuation saves lives! Great post by @styluscommunications #writing" 2/11/15 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic.

1. The comma: Most of this section pretty much just told me, "Use your brain." I already know most of the content covered, but I have never been taught about restrictive and nonrestrictive elements. It seems like an easy mistake to make to not add a comma before and after nonrestrictive elements, but the content about restrictive elements is intuitive to me.
2. Unnecessary commas: I consider myself a "comma-happy" writer so I read these two sections for help with decreasing the comma count in my writing. I already knew most of the content in these sections. What I didn't know amounts to I need to pay closer attention to the sentence structure to better understand where a comma should and shouldn't be.
3. The apostrophe: I use the apostrophe correctly for most of the cases covered. I do not correctly punctuate plural of numbers or plural of abbreviations. I will look out for those in the future. This section was a bit strange because the "rules" they presented for "plural of letters" and "plural of words mentioned as words" were actually just recommendations because they added content that justifies punctuating those the other way as well. 

Reflection

I peer edited Dylan and Jessica's essays. I learned that he punctuation concepts I chose are not difficult but they are easy mistakes to make. Both Dylan and Jessica used commas and apostrophes correctly most of the time. In Dylan's sentence "they know his work, they know his style and they study his films to learn from him", he did not put a comma after the word "style". In cases like this, I make this mistake all the time. Jessica misused an apostrophe in her sentence "Cilento explores the passion that most architect’s feel for their profession and reminds readers that that passion drives the profession." Again, this is not a mistake that shows lack of understanding.