Class Five was primarily about punctuation. Although I would like to think that I have quite a decent grasp on punctuation there are indeed certain things that to this day I misuse but, this will not happen any more! My biggest punctuation error is the misuse of colons and semi-colons, and i'm quite sure that many people struggle with this problem. After this lesson I however, will never fail to mix them up again as now i know that a colon : is for a list and a semi-colon ; is only used where there is a relationship to the previous text.
This lesson also reminds me of something I found whilst browsing the internet, which also illustrates how important punctuation really is! An English Professor writes on the Board the sentence
"A woman without her man is nothing."
The students were then asked to punctuate this sentence.
The male students of the class wrote
"A woman, without her man, is nothing."
The female students then wrote
"A woman; without her, man is nothing."
Well, it made me chuckle and I think it illustrates how important punctuation is, a change of a comma or a semi-colon can completely alter the meaning of a sentence!
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