Technical Writing Grammar Punctuation Mechanics and Spelling Punctuation

Technical Writing Grammar, Punctuation, Mechanics, and Spelling Punctuation: - The system of using marks in writing phrases and sentences. 1. Apostrophe (’) Rules: a) Place it before final ‘s’ in a singular word and after ‘s’ in a plural word to indicate possession or belonging.

Contd… e. g. My friend’s brother. The students’ books. The women’s rights. The King James’/’s crown. b)To form contraction. e. g. will not- won’t I am – I’m

2. Colon(: ) Rules: a) After a Salutation e. g. Dear Mr. Sharma: b) After an emphatic or cautionary word if explanations follow e. g. Note: The participants should manage their lodging and fooding themselves.

Contd… c) After an independent clause to precede a quotation, list or example e. g. -Kenneth Morgan writes: The conflict in the Middle East is dangerous to the Western world. -She needed: a pen, a pencil, and a ruler. - The problem has two possible solutions: hire new workers, or give these workers a little more salary.

3. Comma (, ) Rules: a) Before a coordinating conjunction(and, but, or, for, yet etc. ) linking two independent clauses e. g. You’re a very disciplined student, so every teacher loves you. b) To set off introductory comments e. g. First, he shouted at them.

c) To set off sentence interrupters e. g. The essay, she had written about violence against women, was published yesterday. d) After each item in a series of three or more e. g. Nisha, Sabita, Rohan, and Nirvik are chosen as students of the year. e) To set off long number, the day and the year. e. g. - She earns Rs. 10, 000 every month. - She was born on November 7, 2007.

Contd… e) To set off the city from the state and the state from the rest of the sentence. e. g. She has been living in Sallaghari, Bhaktapur, for many years. f) To set off parenthetical expressions e. g. By the way, where are you from? 4. Exclamation point (!) a) After strong statements, commands or interjections

Contd… e. g. -You must work harder! -Do not use that knife! -Be aware! 5. Full stop/ Period (. ) a) At the end of a sentence (statement) e. g. I knocked at the door. There was no reply. b) Used often with abbreviations

Contd… e. g. Mr. , a. m. , etc. 6. Question Mark(? ) a) After direct questions e. g. Are you going? Note: Do not use a question mark at the end of an indirect question. e. g. He asked me if I was leaving.

7. Quotation Marks(“ ”) a) To enclose words of direct quotation e. g. He said, “I’m very sad. ” b) To enclose the titles of articles, poems, stories etc. e. g. The article “The Fashion Industry Today” has been written by Dr. K. N. Baidhya.

8. Semicolon (; ) a) Between two independent clauses not joined by a coordinating conjunctions e. g. The sun was already low in the sky; (so) it would soon be dark. b) To separate items in a series containing internal commas i. e. which already contains commas. e. g. When the programme was organized, all members were present, including Roshan Rai; the president, Sujit Gurung, the secretary; and Aabita Basnet; the treasurer.

9. Hyphen (-) a) To form compound words e. g. well-known writer Hard-hearted b) For compound numbers between 21 and 99 in words e. g. twenty-one c) To join the numerator and denominator of fractions e. g. one-half, four-fifth etc. d) To form a compound from a prefix e. g. Pro-British, Pre-modern etc.

10. Dash (__) a) To indicate emphatic pause e. g. You’ll be fired unless you obey the Mahavidyalaya rules. b) To highlight a new idea e. g. Here’s what we can do to improve production quality__provide on-thejob training, salary incentives, and quality controls.

11. Ellipsis(…) a) To indicate omission of words within quoted materials e. g. “ Six years ago … the company had to pay three millions Rupees loan. ” 12. Parenthesis ( ) a) To define a term or provide an abbreviation for later use. e. g. We belong to the Society for Technical Communication(STC)

Contd… b) To clarify preceding information e. g. All the students of the Mahavidyalaya (School, +2, and Bachelor’s) were present in the programme. *******