7 Most Effective Self Defense Techniques

49. The comma is not so specialized as are the colon and the semicolon. It is the most commonly used, as it is the lightest and least emphatic, of all the marks of punctuation. 50. The single dash is a means of indicating an abrupt change of either thought or construction within the sentence any relation, in fact, that the writer desires to emphasize strongly. 51. The marks of parenthesis (curves) and the double dashes are used as here only in the punctuation of parenthetical matter. In ordinary parentheses that are too remote from the context to be punctuated effectively by commas, most writers prefer the double dashes to the curves. The curves, or marks of parenthesis proper, are being more and more restricted to use with single word parentheses dates, numbers, or letters indicating a series, etc. 52. These, then, are the distinguishing characteristics of the marks used to indicate the internal structure of a sentence. The next step is to see what kinds of structural relations within a sentence need punctuating. 53. Consider first the type of sentence which consists of an introductory statement followed by an enumeration of details, an analysis, a quotation, etc. What point should stand after the introductory statement? The answer differs under different circumstances. Notice the following cases: (1) When the introductory statement is formal, and when the enumeration or quotation is long (in the case of a quotation, two or more complete sentences), the proper mark is the colon....