The Tutor.com Blog

After first or second grade, punctuation is not something that most people spend too much time thinking about. But today? Today is National Punctuation Day! When I exclaimed this out loud, the office erupted in excitement. Yes, really.

We are people who actually do spend a lot of time thinking about grammar, and we decided it was important to acknowledge the havoc punctuation can wreak on communication. (Of course, here in the marketing department, each of us has a favorite punctuation mark.  Obviously, I love parentheses and exclamation points, while Jill, our Marketing Director has a soft spot for the em-dash but a singular hatred for the Oxford comma.)

For example: the punctuation of a sentence can convey many different thoughts and meanings. In this exercise we removed the punctuation to the first paragraph of a famous book (Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre) and then asked a few people (who weren’t as excited about the day) to add the appropriate markings back in.

The variation was really interesting!

Try it yourself! How would you punctuate the following paragraph?:

there was no possibility of taking a walk that day we had been wandering indeed in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning but since dinner mrs reed when there was no company dined early the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre and a rain so penetrating that further out-door exercise was now out of the question

If you are having trouble with grammar, don’t worry—you’re not alone. The reality is that most people don’t use perfect grammar in their everyday lives.

Whether you’re talking with friends online or watching a TV show, you are constantly surrounded by casual language. And it becomes tempting to use this sort of English in papers and reports for school. Doing this often results in disastrous grades and a lot of red pen. If you want to keep your teacher from visiting the office supply store every time you hand in a paper, follow these tips to use grammar properly.

Relax! It may sound simple, but people often make grammar mistakes because they second-guess their own writing. It is important to have confidence in your writing ability and not change something to make it sound more educated or intelligent. Just let the writing flow and don’t try to write in an unnatural way.

Develop your own voice. When writing a paper or report, people have a tendency to not read what they are writing.

Ever gotten to the end of a sentence and forgotten what you were trying to write? To avoid this, make sure to read as you write. Over time you will develop an ear for how the writing should sound. When something sounds unnatural or confusing, stop and track down where the mistake occurred.

This especially helps with punctuation that has to do with timing, such as commas and periods. If you read aloud to yourself while you write, you will have a better idea as to where you should pause and place those pesky commas.

Even if you feel self-conscious, do it—nothing makes a bigger difference to your writing than hearing how it actually sounds.

Keep an arsenal of test sentences. Never go to battle with your paper without a few example sentences in your back pocket. You’d be amazed how far one grammatical example can go.

If your teacher keeps marking the same mistakes on paper after paper, look up the proper grammar rule and memorize a sentence that uses the rule. It may sound painful, but once you have that sentence ingrained in your memory you’ll be sure to avoid the much more excruciating red pen. (Picking an example sentence that is amusing makes it much easier to remember!)

You are what you read. Read articles that require professional editing. Newspapers and magazines are a good place to start. Watch for certain grammatical features in the articles and incorporate them into your own writing.

Grammar goes a long way when it comes to communicating a point. Although it may be a pain to remember all the rules, it pays to have them under your belt when it’s time for a job interview or that first college paper. First impressions are important, and your first written one should show you have the tools for the job.

Share some of your tips for remembering the rules of grammar.

You want your English essay to stand out for its stellar content and engaging turn of phrase—not for misplaced apostrophes. Here are some common grammatical mistakes to watch out for in your essay:

It’s vs. its
Use an apostrophe when you are making a contraction out of the word “it” and “is.” A good way to remember this is to see if you can replace “it is” with “it’s”—if you can you’ve used it correctly. “Its” however is the possessive form of “it.” Like the possessives “theirs,” “ours,” “hers,” and “yours.”

Fewer doesn’t equal less
The words fewer and less are not interchangeable. If you can count the parts of something, use fewer. For example: Put “fewer” ice cubes in my glass so I can fit some juice in there. If you’re talking about something that can’t quite be pulled apart and counted, use less. For example: Can you put a little bit “less” soda in my glass.

Subject and object pronoun mistakes
Me and he went to the movies? Wrong. Him and I went to the movies? Still wrong. Why? The words I, YOU, HE, SHE, THEY and WE are subjects. And, the words ME, YOU, HIM, HER, THEM and US are objects—the thing to which something is happening. An object shouldn’t be substituted as a subject just because you add the word “and” in between. An “and” should be joining two subjects together or two objects together, not one from each category.

To double check your work, the sentence should sound right if you were to take out the “and.” “Me went to the movies” sounds pretty silly, as does “Him went to the movies.” He and I went to the movies? Perfect.

Which and that
Use THAT when you have a restrictive clause— an important part of a sentence that you can’t delete because it would change the meaning of what you’re trying to say. For example: The book THAT is on the table is mine (as opposed to the ones on the shelf.) Use WHICH when you have a non-restrictive clause—something that’s not necessary in your sentence to get your point across. For example: The book on the table, WHICH is white and has four legs, is mine. One way to remember this rule: WHICH is always used after a comma. (And make sure you don’t confuse WHICH with WITCH, as in Glenda).