😌 Punctuation Is Easy

William Fitzpatrick -

A lot of English learners struggle with punctuation (. , ; ! ?), mainly because so many textbooks teach it as a big list of rules and exceptions to those rules. But there's a better way.

💬  In this week’s issue:

  • Mastering English Punctuation in 3 easy steps.
  • TOEFL iBT. Some feedback on one subscriber's Independent Essay.
  • The Reader's Mind. It's where your ideas live.

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Master the Art of English Punctuation in 3 Simple Steps

Struggling with punctuation in your writing? You're not alone.

Proper punctuation is essential for clear communication and can make or break your credibility in professional or academic settings. When a native English speaker reads a sentence without proper punctuation, they cringe 😬

Luckily, I've created an easy guide to help you master English punctuation in just three steps. You'll be able to unlock a world of international research, collaborations, and opportunities.

Mastering English Punctuation in 3 Easy Steps

Discover how to:

  1. Correctly connect independent clauses with end punctuation marks or conjunctions for smoother reading.
  2. Use commas in series and parallelism to enhance clarity, including the Oxford comma and maintaining parallel structure.
  3. Separate modifiers from the main clause to avoid confusion, covering nonrestrictive modifiers, conjunctive adverbs, and direct address.

Don't miss out on these valuable insights! Check out the full post→

👨‍💻 Latest Writing Tips

  • My advanced reading & writing students have been loving our new textbook→
  • In Korean there's no difference between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses, so I'm making some video tutorials to explain the difference. Here's part 1: Non-restrictive Relative Clauses→
  • I gave some live feedback for one subscriber's TOEFL essay

💬 Quote

The reader is the home of your ideas. Writing is a performance that happens in the intersection between your work and the reader’s experience of it. The ethos of good writing begins with that recognition.
Eric Hayot, The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities
But if you think about what’s going on when you read, you’re processing information at an incredible rate. One measure of how good the writing is is how little effort it requires for the reader to track what’s going on.
David Foster Wallace, Quack This Way

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