How to Punctuate Sentences Simply and Clearly
Commas and Full Stops - Punctuation's Essential Building Blocks
Nov 13, 2008
Sir Winston Chuchill, wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. His passionate speeches inspired a nation. However, it was not only his rhetoric but also his sentence construction that ensured his messages had the desired effect.
In everyday English writing, learning a few simple principles can:
- improve comprehension
- help to engage and move the reader
- avoid ambiguity
What is a Sentence?
A sentence is the statement of one main idea: the more complex the idea is, the more complex the sentence becomes. A well-constructed sentence can be broken down and analyzed, but broadly speaking, a sentence is a self-contained statement which makes sense in isolation.
One sentence can also contain many ideas if, in putting them all together, the meaning of the sentence has a single unity, as in this example from one of Churchill’s speeches:
Fill the armies, rule the air, pour out the munitions, strangle the U-boats, sweep the mines, plough the land, build the ships, guard the streets, succour the wounded, uplift the downcast, and honour the brave.
Each idea could have been a sentence in its own right. However, by putting many different ideas together, Churchill built to a natural crescendo which culminated in “honouring the brave”.
Punctuation
Punctuating a sentence means alerting the reader to the correct places to pause, or to sections of the sentence which have meaning set aside or distinct from the flow. The most basic forms of punctuation are full stops and commas.
Full Stops or Periods
A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, or period. It used to be considered correct to add two spaces after the full stop before the beginning of the next sentence, but word processing programs which automatically justify have changed this tradition as it can lead to an awkward-looking imbalance in a line.
Commas
Commas can be used singly or in pairs.
The Single Comma
The single comma is placed:
- to denote natural pauses between parts of the sentence
- between a statement and a dependent question (e.g. You wouldn’t go there, would you?)
- between the terms of a series or parts of a list of any kind: adjectives, nouns, phrases
- after an introductory phrase of description or definition (e.g. On landing at the airport, the passengers breathed a sigh of relief.)
Pairs of Commas
Pairs of commas are used:
- before and after parentheses (e.g. This wine, in my opinion, is the best I have ever tasted.)
- before and after a non-defining adjectival clause: in other words, a clause that describes but which isn’t essential to the sentence (see sentence #1 below)
These two sentences demonstrate how commas can point the reader towards the importance of different aspects of the same facts:
- The watch, which kept perfect time, was given to him by his father.
- The watch that kept perfect time was given to him by his father.
In the first sentence, it is incidental that the watch kept perfect time. In the second sentence, the watch is defined by the fact that it ‘kept perfect time’ (implying that there was, perhaps, another watch, which didn’t keep perfect time).
NB It is worth noting that a non-defining clause is introduced by who, whom, or which, and never by that.
Never use a comma simply because you feel a sentence is too long and needs to be broken up. If the meaning is flowing, the words can continue unimpeded, consider the last four lines of this sentence from Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shallot:
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Punctuation evolved as a way to give clarity to writing. A good tip is to read aloud what you have written, pausing at the commas and full stops. Simply constructed sentences, which employ commas and full stops correctly, will always make sense and be easy to read.
Learning where and when to use colons and semicolons will add a further dimension to any writer’s prose, but it is better not to use them at all than to use them inappropriately. Even the most complex sentences can be perfectly well punctuated by commas and full stops.
Making the effort to pick up a few simple tips can make all the difference.
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