Writing Tips: Punctuation

How to Write Admission Essay with Correct Punctuation?

Students generally tend to believe that when they write an admission essay, the only thing that matters is their ideas and, consequently, punctuation rules are often neglected. However, correct punctuation is essential for award-winning writing, so save this post as your future online college homework help.

The most common mistakes and violations of punctuation rules can be subdivided into those referring to the use of apostrophe, comma and hyphen:

1. An apostrophe must be used to form the possessive case of nouns and its position must be observed for singular nouns (before s) and plural nouns (after s). It is also used to form a contraction; however, according to essay punctuation rules, contractions must be avoided in favor of the full forms. Do not forget to pay attention to its place in a word. It is worth mentioning that contractions are not common in formal style in general.
2. Comma and a conjunction must be used to join clauses of a compound sentence.For instance:
   The correct punctuation essay possessed produced a very favorable impression on the reader, so students must take time in order to proofread and ensure they have the flawless piece of writing.
3. Comma is used to separate the information attached to the beginning or the end of the sentence if this position is syntactically unusual.For instance:
   Many years ago, he started dreaming about his MBA degree.
4. Comma is necessary between each item of a list when you are listing three or more items in a sentence or several epithets to one noun.
5. Correct punctuation presupposes the use of commas for appositions, parenthetic words and constructions, as well as non-defining relative clauses.
6. Commas are necessary to separate the direct speech and quotations.
7. Commas are also used to set off numbers in groups of three digits, words for the day of the week, month and year of a date.
8. Use hyphens with compound adjectives and numbers (e.g. time-consuming, twenty-one, etc.) and prefixes self-, ex-, great- (e.g. self-efficient, ex-president), but as there is a tendency for the reduction of hyphenated words, the correct variant must be checked in a dictionary.

Essay punctuation is determined only by a few rules, but the correct use may make a dramatic difference in the general perception of your performance. So, spend proper time to make sure you apply the rules correctly.