Punctuation Essentials Webinar
This live and interactive webinar lasts 60 minutes so it’s easy to fit this into your working day. Without leaving your desk you’ll be able to engage with an expert in English grammar and punctuation from the UK’s leader in this field.
Each participant receives a guide that contains valuable information to help you apply what you have learnt to your writing. It also contains exercises, complete with model answers to inspire you.
By the end of this webinar, you will know how to:
- Avoid ambiguity or embarrassment in your writing by using correct punctuation
- Distinguish between the two main uses of the apostrophe
- Distinguish between the four main uses of the comma
- Avoid common mistakes with apostrophes and commas
- Follow current practice and avoid your writing looking dated
1. Apostrophes: getting them wrong is the quickest way to look ignorant
Apostrophes have two main functions and one minor one that has mostly disappeared. Using Plain Words’ Foolproof Apostrophe Flowchart, you will practise lots of examples and become confident of avoiding the most frequent mistakes – and even a few obscure ones.
2. Commas: essential or just verbal tripping hazards?
If you just put in commas where you need to breathe, your documents will be rather random and irregular. Commas make meaning clearer by separating pieces of information. However, we don’t use as many of them as we used to. When can you leave the comma out and when must you include it?
3. End on a good note
Full stops, question marks and exclamation marks end sentences, but they can be mis-used. Modern business writing no longer uses full stops to show abbreviations. Should you leave out question marks if you are, in effect, giving an order? And why should you avoid exclamation marks?
4. Make your text look smarter
Sometimes, a comma isn’t enough. But colons and semi-colons are not always interchangeable. Learn their specific functions and make your text look smarter by practising some simple examples.
