Griffith English Language Institute
HELP Yourself Resource Transcript: Punctuation and Spelling
This video looks at punctuation and spelling, which are important in academic and
professional writing.
Punctuation refers to marks such as full stops, commas, colons, semi colons, and
apostrophes. It also refers to spacing within the text. Although these marks are very small,
they can change the meaning of the sentence. Legal cases have been lost because of a
comma in the wrong place! For example: “eats shoots and leaves” is very different in
meaning to “eats, shoots, and leaves”.
Full stops
Let’s look first at full stops, which Americans refer to as a ‘period’.
As you probably know, a full stop goes at the end of a sentence to show that the sentence is
finished. We also use question marks for questions and exclamation marks for emphasis.
Be careful to use a full stop, not a comma, to separate two independent clauses.
Commas
Commas add extra information to a sentence and signal a pause to the reader.
Look to this sentence and notice the pauses where the commas are:

In many cases, the total time that students spent on various activities on mobile
devices added up to far more than an hour, which suggests that they multitasked
frequently.
There are two situations in which commas often cause problems for students. Firstly,
commas are used after adverbial expressions at the beginning of a sentence. For example,




In addition,
However,
In 2009,
In recent years,
The other situation where we use a comma is for adding extra information, such as in a nondefining relative clause. For example,

In many cases, the total time that students spent on various activities on mobile
devices added up to far more than an hour, which suggests that they multitasked
frequently (Roberts & Rees, 2014).
Look at the video on ‘complex sentences’ to find out more about adding extra information to
a sentence and the use of commas and full stops.
Colons
Now let’s turn to colons. This mark is used to introduce a list. For example:

There were three main issues: economic, geographic, and political.
The colon means ‘which is’ or ‘which are’, so when we use a colon we don’t need to use
these words.
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Semi-colon
The semi colon is not frequently used in everyday writing but is more common in academic
texts. There are three occasions when it is useful. The first situation is after some linking
words such as however, consequently, hence, accordingly, nevertheless and thus. We use a
semi colon when you have two closely related independent clauses, like this:

Several attempts to resolve the situation were made; however, none of these were
successful.

Of these patients, 10 were not enrolled; thus, the cohort was composed of 167
patients for the trial.
Semi colons can also be used instead of a full stop in cases where sentences are
independent but the meaning is closely related:

Some people work best in the morning; others work better later in the day.
The third use is to differentiate when we have long items in a list. For example:

The case involved three people: Mr Brown, who lived in Ipswich and was married;
Mrs Smith, who lived on the Gold Coast and was single; and Mr Jones, who lived in
Brisbane and was divorced.
In this example, you can see a combination of punctuation marks.
Apostrophes
Apostrophes are another important punctuation mark in English, and even native speakers
make mistakes with them. An apostrophe does two things. Firstly, it shows that a letter is
missing, for example:



‘it’s’ means ‘it is’
‘we’re’ means ‘we are’, and
‘don’t’ means ‘do not’.
These are called contractions. It is generally better to avoid contractions in academic writing.
Secondly, apostrophes can be used to show possession. For example:


John’s research
Neil’s publications
However, the possession apostrophe tends to be used only with people. For other nouns, we
use alternative ways of showing possession, for example by making the words into a
compound noun.


Griffith University (not Griffith’s University)
the office door (not the office’s door)
And apostrophes aren’t used with possessive pronouns such as:



theirs
ours
its
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The other tricky area with the possession apostrophe is knowing where to put it. The
sentence ‘the teacher’s book’ could be written in two ways:


The teacher’s book
The teachers’ book
In the first sentence, the book belongs to one teacher. In the second sentence, there is one
book that belongs to more than one teacher.
Spacing
One key thing to remember about punctuation is where to put a space. A punctuation mark
comes directly after a word. A space is then needed directly after the punctuation mark.
Punctuation and formatting are very important in academic writing, especially for referencing.
Look at the video on referencing for more on this topic.
Spelling
Now let’s turn to spelling. This is a very complex area and unfortunately there are not many
easy rules! As you know, in English there is often little connection between the pronunciation
of a word and its spelling so it is sometimes impossible to know how to pronounce a word
from how it is spelt. For example, there are many different pronunciations of O-U-G-H.



ought
through
enough
For this reason, it is good to know how to read phonetic script in a dictionary, like this:
There are also differences in American and British English spelling. For example: colour,
centre, and travelling. Australia tends to use British spelling. Both American and British
spelling are usually acceptable for lecturers and tutors, but it’s important to be consistent and
not change styles.
Spelling is very important as mistakes create a very poor impression on the reader,
particularly in academic and professional writing, and you may lose marks if you spell words
incorrectly. Fortunately, the spell checker on your computer helps to make this easier, so
make sure that this is turned on, and that the language is set to Australian English. Then,
look out for any red underlined words that show a spelling mistake. If your spell checker
program gives you alternatives, be careful to choose the correct one. Always make sure that
you read through your work and don’t rely on the program to find all the spelling mistakes.
Another reason that you need to pay attention is because the program will miss words that
you have spelled correctly but are actually incorrectly applied - for example, if you write
‘form’ instead of ‘from’.
The other thing to do is to raise your awareness of the words that you are having difficulty
spelling. You’ll probably find that there are several words that you spell consistently wrong,
so it’s important to note these down and revise them. If you are having difficulty, focus on
just five words a day and keep testing yourself.
This video has looked at punctuation and spelling, two very important areas for academic
writing. For practice, try the exercises below.
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