Improve your English punctuation: How to write sentences

Why are some people able to explain things clearly when they speak, but are not able to do so when they write?

It's not a lack of intelligence. If it were, they wouldn't be able to express themselves so well when they speak. It's that they don't know how to translate the sentences they say so clearly and correctly when they speak into what they write onto the page or screen. The main reason for this in my experience, is that they struggle with using punctuation.

In particular, it's using correctly the most important and the most basic structure in punctuation, the sentence, that many of us struggle with.

Punctuation rules are confusing

Why do many of us struggle with using punctuation?

The answer is quite simple, it's how we learnt to use punctuation. The blame for this in most cases is on how punctuation was explained or taught to us (or in some cases, not taught to us) in school.

English teachers and linguists have a tendency to overcomplicate things. They often use complicated terms (e.g. complex sentence, simple sentence, main clause, subordinate clause etc...) when explaining the rules of using English. And how they explain how to use punctuation in writing is no exception.

As a result, most of us have learnt punctuation by copying what we have seen others do when we read. Although this does help us to use it, it doesn't explain when and why we should use it. Not understanding this is the reason why many of us write confusing and overlong sentences.

To understand how to use punctuation correctly, it's essential that you know why we need to use it.

Punctuation reflects how we speak

When we speak, we don't only communicate meaning by the words we say, but also by how we say some of the words and the pauses we use between some of them.

When we speak, we often say words in different ways. We sometimes change the pitch (speak in a high voice or a low voice) of how we say a word or change the volume (say some words louder than others). We do this to express different meanings. For example, by increasing the pitch of the voice at the end of a sentence, indicates that we are asking a question instead of making a statement.

In addition to changing how we say words when we speak, we also use pauses. These pauses are used to separate points we want to say/make. We use these pauses to avoid people misunderstanding or being confused about the information we are telling them. And some of these pauses are longer than others.

When we translate what we say into written words on paper or on a screen, all the meaning given by the change in how we say a word and the pauses we use is lost. In order to give the words we write the same meaning as they had when spoken, we use punctuation.

That's what punctuation was originally designed to do. Each punctuation mark (e.g. commas, question marks etc...) was created to reflect a different part of speech which was not a word. You have punctuation marks which reflect the pauses in speech (e.g. commas, full stops/periods) or punctuation marks which reflect a change in pitch or volume in speech (e.g. exclamation marks, question marks etc...).

Punctuation which reflects a change in pitch or volume is very easy to understand and use. I know of very few people who have a problem with using a question mark (?), an exclamation mark (!) or even quotation marks (" ").

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the use of the punctuation marks that are used for pauses.

Punctuation for pauses

When we speak, we make two different distinct types of pauses: short pauses and long pauses. To reflect these different pauses in our writing, we have two punctuation marks. For shorter pauses, we have commas (,). For longer pauses (where you often take a breath), we have full stops/periods (.).

These are the two main punctuation marks which are used to create the sentences we write. They are also the ones which are most often badly used when people write. A badly placed comma can completely change the meaning of a sentence or make a sentence confusing to understand. And not using enough full stops/periods in a paragraph, makes overlong sentences which are difficult to read.

You may be asking yourself if there are rules for using commas and full stops/periods to write good and understandable sentences. There are. But you don't really need to learn them to write good sentences, because you already know how to create good sentences. You do it every time you speak.

Write as you speak

The best way to see if you are using commas and full stops/periods correctly (and you aren't writing overlong or confusing sentences), is by reading out what you've written. When you say what you've written out, only pause when you come to a comma or full stop/period.

If you find that what you are reading out isn't like how you would normally say it (it doesn't have the pauses that you would use if you said it), then you know there is a problem. More likely than not, you will probably find that you'll have to add commas to avoid misunderstandings or confusion. You'll probably also find that you'll have to shorten some of the sentences which you have written.

The best way to know if a sentence you've written is too long, is when you are reading it out, you feel the need to take a breath before you reach the end of it. When you split one sentence into two, you will often have to rewrite parts of both. When you have spilt one sentence into two, make sure that you reread both of them to see if it necessary to rewrite them.

And that's pretty much what you need to do to improve your use of commas and periods/full stops.

A punctuation test

To make sure that you fully know how to use commas and full stops/periods in your own writing, I have created the below test.

Using the method of writing as you speak, add commas and full stops/periods to the below text to create understandable sentences. There is no need to rewrite anything in the text, just add commas and full stops/periods.

When you have done this, press the button below that says "See correct text" to check if you are right.


It shows that it's not that the staff don't want to sell and promote the products or services but that they don't know how to do it few have any prior experience of selling any type of products or services they don't understand how to persuade people to buy or identify what products or services would be of most use or interest to the person they are speaking to no matter what we do until they learn how to do this sales conversions are going to continue to remain low.


Correct Text

It shows that it's not that the staff don't want to sell and promote the products or services, but that they don't know how to do it. Few have any prior experience of selling any type of products or services. They don't understand how to persuade people to buy or identify what products or services would be of most use or interest to the person they are speaking to. No matter what we do, until they learn how to do this, sales conversions are going to continue to remain low.


In conclusion

We all know how to create well-structured and understandable sentences, because we create hundreds if not thousands of them a day when we speak. When you realise that commas and full stops/periods are just the written representation of the pauses that we use between words when we speak, it's easy to know when and why we use them.

I have to admit that I'm over-simplifying the use of commas and full stops/periods for writing sentences. But using commas and full stops/periods in your writing to mirror the different pauses in your speech, will not only make your writing clearer to understand, but easier to read.