Unit 7 · Topic 7.6

7.6 Punctuation, grammar and emphasis

Standard grammar keeps writing clear, and punctuation shows how ideas connect. Colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses and other marks can clarify, organize, emphasize or add information, and design features like italics can stress a word. This topic covers both following the conventions and analyzing how writers use them.

Key terms

semicolon
colon
dash
parentheses
italics
conventions

Why conventions matter

Conventions are the shared rules of grammar, usage and punctuation. They let readers focus on your ideas instead of decoding your sentences. On the essays, errors only cost you if they get in the way of meaning, but writing so full of errors that it interferes with communication can't earn the top score in the evidence-and-commentary row.

In multiple choice, writing questions test conventions indirectly: a choice with a comma splice, a fragment or a misused colon is almost always wrong, even when the real question is about emphasis or clarity.

What each mark does

Mark	Main job	Example
Comma	Separates items, sets off introductory and extra elements	After the vote, the board adjourned.
Semicolon	Joins closely related independent clauses; separates list items that contain commas	The vote passed; the debate did not end.
Colon	After a complete clause, introduces an explanation, list or quotation	The board had one choice: delay the vote.
Dash	Sets off an interruption or adds emphasis at the end	The plan had one flaw—cost—and it was serious.
Parentheses	Adds a quieter side note	The board (all seven members) agreed.
Hyphen	Joins words into one modifier	a well-known study
Quotation marks	Show exact words; can signal irony or doubt	the so-called solution
End marks	Statement, question or exclamation	Who benefits?

Punctuation as a rhetorical choice

Writers pick marks for effect, not just correctness. A dash feels more abrupt and emphatic than a comma. Parentheses feel like a whisper. A semicolon suggests that two ideas are tightly linked. A rhetorical question invites the reader to supply the answer.

Samuel Johnson's 1755 letter to Lord Chesterfield uses semicolons to separate parallel clauses that already contain commas: "it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it." The semicolons keep the three parts distinct, so each lands as its own complaint.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address (1933) uses a dash to stop and define a key phrase: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." The pause after "itself" makes the definition feel like an emphatic afterthought.

Italics and boldface

Design features can create emphasis too. In "Civil Disobedience" (1849), Thoreau writes "It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate." In the original, each "It" (meaning the government) is printed in italics. The italics stress the subject, insisting that government itself deserves no credit for what the people achieved.

In your own timed essays, emphasis should come from word choice and sentence structure, not from typography.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Choosing punctuation for clarity and emphasis
Practice draft sentence (written for this practice set): The council's report recommended one change___ a second bus route to the east side. Which choice correctly completes the sentence and emphasizes the recommendation? (A) ; (B) : (C) , and (D) no punctuation
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Check what comes before the blank: "The council's report recommended one change" is a complete independent clause.
2. Step 2: Check what comes after: "a second bus route to the east side" is a phrase, not a clause, and it explains what the "one change" was.
3. Step 3: A semicolon (A) must join two independent clauses, and the second part isn't one.
4. Step 4: A colon (B) follows a complete clause and introduces an explanation, which is exactly this situation. It also points the reader forward, which emphasizes the recommendation.
5. Step 5: (C) makes it sound as if the report recommended two separate things instead of explaining the one change, and (D) runs the phrase into the sentence so the reader can't tell where the explanation starts.
Answer: (B), the colon: "The council's report recommended one change: a second bus route to the east side."

Common mistakes

Using a semicolon before a phrase or list. A semicolon joins independent clauses (or separates complex list items).
Putting a colon after an incomplete clause, as in "The ingredients are: flour and sugar." The words before a colon should be able to stand alone.
Joining two sentences with only a comma (a comma splice).
Analyzing punctuation without saying what it does for meaning or tone. "Johnson uses semicolons" isn't analysis; say what the separation emphasizes.

On the exam

For conventions questions, read the sentence aloud in your head with each choice. Then check the rule: what's on each side of the mark?
In rhetorical analysis, punctuation is worth discussing only when it clearly shapes emphasis or tone in a key moment. Tie it to purpose.

Connected topics

Videos

How to Use a Semicolon (And Write in a SOPHISTICATED Manner!)
Garden of EnglishWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
How to use a semicolon - Emma Bryce
TED-EdWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Dashes | Punctuation | Khan Academy
Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Colons and Semicolons
The School of LifeWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Linking function of the colon | The Colon and semicolon | Punctuation | Khan Academy
Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
How to use italics and underlines | Punctuation | Khan Academy
Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

3 questions on 7.6 Punctuation, grammar and emphasis. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best, from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not.

Francis Bacon, "Of Studies," from Essays (1625 edition); the opening of the essay, in a modernized-spelling text that keeps some older forms: "proyning" means pruning, "contemn" means scorn, "conference" means conversation, and "maketh" means makes.

Question 1 of 3

In the sentence "They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study," the colon primarily serves to

Question 2 of 3

In the sentence "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man," the semicolons mainly serve to

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

[. . .] The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.

[. . .] A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," from Essays: First Series (1841). Bracketed ellipses mark omitted text.

Question 3 of 3

In paragraph 4, the dashes around "'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood'" primarily serve to

0 of 3 answered