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Victory
News Magazine Punctuation Guidelines
by M.Al-Zahra
1. Use full stops only at the end of a sentence.
Begin sentences with a capital letter. Proper nouns also require
capital letters. (.)
e.g. “Masjid Raya ”, “Masjid Agung”
2. Use commas to separate parts of a sentence to
avoid any confusion with meaning. Additional information is
enclosed within commas. (,)
e.g. “The pollution of rivers, which is often caused
by chemical waste and fertiliser, is causing enormous problems
for oyster farmers, especially in NSW”.
A comma is used after most connectives (linking words),
and usually before and after a connective in mid-sentence.
Commas separate clauses in most conditional sentences.
e.g. “Therefore, chemical use on farms should be
more controlled. However, even if laws were passed tomorrow,
most rivers would take years to recover”.
3. Semi-colons
are used to separate subgroups within lists, but more often to
join two independent clauses that are grammatically complete but
closely related. However, in the latter case, you can always use
a full stop instead. (;)
e.g. “Chemical waste from factories is still
drained into river systems; it is hard to believe that this
practice is still allowed by law in most States”.
4. You may use a colon
if you need to draw attention to what is to follow. (:)
e.g. “The environment is important for the
following reason:”
5. Use quotation marks for quotes and titles. Apostrophes
show possession or contraction. (“”) (it’s)
e.g. “The Sydney Morning Herald” oyster farmers’
profits it’s
6.
Do not use contractions in formal writing. Use the
full form instead. (n’t)
e.g. “don’t”, “shouldn’t”,
“can’t”, “it’s” etc.
7. Do not use
exclamation marks in formal academic writing, and avoid
asking questions. (!)
e.g. “It was great!”
8. Brackets
are useful, especially for quoting statistics but do not
overuse. ( ( ) )
e.g. “the total number of cars (10)”
Reference:
Australia Centre Medan, “IELTS Preparation”,
Jl. R.A. Kartini No. 32, Medan, Indonesia, North Sumatra,
Indonesia, 20152, pg. 114.
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