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Lessons · Teaching · commas, semicolons and the apostrophe

Three marks that carry most of the questions

The comma separates items in a list, follows an introductory element, and surrounds information the sentence could do without. The semicolon joins two complete sentences closely related in sense. The apostrophe marks possession or an omitted letter, and never makes anything plural.

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In beta. This lesson was written for Hone and has not yet been checked by a state certification officer. Practice material, not professional advice. What that means.

What it is for

Punctuation questions are the cheapest marks on the writing test because the rules are few and they are decidable. They are also the ones a teacher is judged on in public, in a newsletter to parents, where an apostrophe in the wrong place costs more credibility than it should.

How to think about it

For a comma, ask which job it is doing; if none of the three, it probably should not be there. For a semicolon, check both sides stand alone as sentences, because a semicolon before a fragment is wrong. For an apostrophe, say the phrase as an 'of' phrase: 'the dog of the teacher' gives 'the teacher's dog', and a plural with no owner gets nothing.

Worked example

'After the meeting, the head spoke.' An introductory element, so a comma
The comma marks where the introduction ends and the sentence proper begins.
'The head, who joined in March, spoke.' Removable information, so commas both sides
One comma without the other is the commonest version of this error.
'It's' is it is; 'its' is possessive, and this one has no apostrophe at all
The only possessive pronoun people expect an apostrophe on, and it never takes one.
'Two teachers' books' is the books of two teachers; 'two teacher's books' is wrong
Plural first, then the apostrophe after the s.

Your turn

Name the thing an apostrophe never does.

An apostrophe never makes a word

The trap

Using a semicolon as a heavier comma. A semicolon joins two things that could each be a sentence. Before a list or a fragment it is simply wrong, and this is the single most common semicolon error on the test.

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