Punctuation, Part 2

The Comma
     I was not aware that a comma is supposed to be used before a coordinating conjunction joining independent clauses. I always thought that when you use "and" to join clauses, the comma was not necessary.  Most of the item listed for commas are basic rules that we are taught as youngsters in elementary and middle school. There wasn't much that caught my eye for this section.

Quotation Marks
     I never knew that you were supposed to use quotation marks to include a quotation in your writing. Just kidding. That is the most obvious case! I always used one quotation mark to show a work of a particular slang or emphasis. According to Rules for Writers, slang words and words with emphasis are not to be surrounded by quotation marks at all.

End Punctuation
     End punctuation is pretty obvious. I don't think I need to say much about this. End punctuation is taught from the time we first learn how to read and write. Sometimes, when texting and other stuff, end punctuation is not used; however, this is in a very informal setting. All other times, when writing, end punctuation is used and practiced with.
    
Other Punctuation Marks
     I never knew why some authors will use dashes in the middle of their sentences. Now I know that the dash is used to display emphasis. Most of the other punctuation were normal stuff that I had already known. The only other example that was a good refresher was this: when poetry is being written in line form, you use slashes to show where lines of poetry would normally end.

Here are some examples of the above punctuation within my own Project 3:

"They can break and they can fix, they can steal and they can replace, they can love and they can hate."
These commas are used to separate items in a list.

Miguel Valez, a University of St. Thomas robots expert, argues that “Robots controlled by humans have also been used to perform dangerous tasks such as exploring dangerous areas or deactivating bombs" (Valez 2).
These quotation marks are used to display a quote that was taken from another source.

In my writing, I noticed that I use commas often. Whether it is to separate clauses within a sentence or to separate items in a list, commas are used quite often in my writing. Also, I realized the importance of quotation marks, especially for academic papers. It is sort of cool to look at all of the different rules and tendencies in English writing and to just think about how someone, or some people, created all of it and had to think about all of the things that are incorporated into writing. That fathoms me.