Needless to say, correct punctuation gives the right meaning to the sentence, and its wrong placement can totally change the meaning. How many punctuation marks are there in English? Period, comma, apostrophe, quotation, question, exclamation, brackets, braces, parenthesis, dash, hyphen, ellipsis, colon, semicolon! However, you don’t need to use all of them at the exam. Following the correct usage will make your IELTS writing look more appealing and easier to read.
Punctuation also influences your score. If you don’t use it properly or forget to use some punctuation marks, it will count as a grammatical mistake. Remember, grammar range and accuracy make up 25% of your score. So, it’s better to avoid making any grammatical mistakes in your IELTS Writing. In today’s blog post, we are looking at different types and proper use of punctuation for your IELTS essays and reports. Make sure you remember all of them and practise using them during your IELTS preparation.
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Period (also called ‘full stop’)
At the end of sentences to mark a sentence’s grammatical end. For example:
- Censorship can protect the public from content that is potentially harmful to the human psyche. But it can also violate the right to freedom of speech and expression.
At the end of abbreviations, such as Mr., Ms., etc., and so on.
You should place the period right after the last letter of the last word in the sentence and leave some space between the period and the first letter of the first word of the next sentence. It might look obvious, but many candidates don’t do this. Start the next sentence with the capital letter.
Using abbreviations in IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 and Task 2 is not a good idea. Instead, write the words out. The exception is for symbols like % and $ which you should use, as they are faster to write and very commonly used, even in formal writing. For example:
- Thus, the figures for the college library fluctuated insignificantly at approximately 65%, while students’ attitude to safety changed more substantially, plummeting by roughly a third in the 70s, and then surging by nearly 40% in the next decade. In the end, nevertheless, it returned to the initial rate of 95% satisfaction.
Apostrophe
In contractions to show that letters are missing, e.g. I’m, it’s, they’ll, who’s. DO NOT use them in IELTS Academic writing. Short forms are too informal:
- On the one hand, it’s difficult to predict what effect this law will have on those citizens who can’t stop driving. – On the one hand, it is difficult to predict what effect this law will have on those citizens who cannot stop driving.
In possessions to indicate ownership. For example:
- Joe’s hat, girls’ hat
- From a student‘s point of view, practical knowledge is much more essential.
READ ABOUT: How to work on your IELTS grammar
Comma
To separate items in a list. For example:
- Line graphs, bar charts, tables and multiple charts have a lot in common.
To separate clauses by ‘and’ or ‘but’ if they have different subjects. For example:
- Relaxation is an essential condition of good productivity, and it would be better for everyone to find time for it in their schedule.
When the subordinate clause goes before the main clause. For example:
- Since you are going to write the Academic Module, you will need to use the academic style in your writing.
When the clauses give extra, non-essential information:
- My sister Rebecca, who lives in Moscow, is getting married.
When subordinate clauses or non-finite comment phrases give additional information. For example:
- Helped by local volunteers, staff at the museum have spent many years sorting and cataloguing more than 100,000 photographs.
- From the individual point of view, living alone in a large city has both upsides and downsides.
Colon
To introduce lists:
- There are three main reasons for the spread of the virus: unprotected contacts, open borders and poor sanitation.
When the second sentence explains or justifies the first sentence:
- Try to avoid crowded places: it will prevent the spreading of the disease.
- You may guess that academic style is different from the language of everyday communication: it is much more formal and less emotional, and it uses a lot of abstract words.
Quotation marks
Use single quotation marks to draw attention to a word:
- Words like ‘acquire’ or ‘obtain’ are used instead of ‘get’ in Academic Writing.
To refer to titles of the books, newspapers, magazines, films, songs, poems, videos, CDs, etc.
- Such cases were described in ‘The Daily Mail’.
Capital letters
To mark the beginning of the sentence.
For proper nouns: personal names, brand names, nationalities and languages, days of the week and months, public holidays and geographical places no matter where they fall in a sentence.
- The graph below shows the profit made by four different cafes in Richmond, Australia, between 2005 and 2015.
- Over the span of 6 years, Wesla Motors halved the number of petrol cars they manufacture.
- The figures for Tyldon Homes and Hensen Group demonstrate a similar pattern, with a more significant decline for Tyldon Homes.
For titles of books, magazines, newspapers, plays, music, e.g. ‘Oliver Twist’, The Guardian.
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