Basic Grammar Articles and punctuation

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Articles & Punctuation


Articles

• 'A' and 'An' are indefinite articles.

• 'The' is a definite article.


Article – ‘A’

• 'A' is placed before consonant sounds: A boy A zebra A one-rupee coin A university


Article – ‘An’

• 'An' is placed before vowel sounds: An orange An umbrella An heir An honest man An hour


Article – ‘The’

• When we refer to a particular person or thing: I saw the man who sells vegetables.

• When a singular noun is meant to represent a whole class: The leopard is the fastest animal



• With names of gulfs, oceans, rivers, mountains and groups of islands: The Indian Ocean The Ganges The Himalayas



• With Ordinals: The first The fifteenth The twentieth



• With Superlatives: The fastest boy The longest river The most beautiful girl



• Before common nouns which are unique: The earth The sky The moon



• Before the names of certain books: The Ramayana The Bible The Iliad


Punctuation

• A full stop, question mark or exclamatory mark is used at the end of sentences: The children are studying well. What are you doing? This ice-cream tastes great!


Punctuation - Commas

• Used to link sentences with a conjunction: The cottage was almost in ruins, but

the garden was lovely.



• Used after a long introductory word, phrase or clause: First, let us study this lesson. After finishing the lesson, the

students took the test.



• Before tags and comments: You're wrong, you know. He is a lovely boy, isn't he?

• In lists: Please buy a book, some pencils, a

few erasers and a scale.


Punctuation - Semicolon

• Used to link independent clauses not joined by a coordinating conjunction: The situation is hopeful; the storm

may lift soon.



• To separate elements already punctuated with commas: Invitations were mailed to professors,

associate professors and assistant professors; the head of departments, secretaries; graduates and undergraduates.



• Before conjunctive adverbs such as therefore, moreover, consequently, indeed etc. He fought hard; however, he lost.


Punctuation - Hyphen

• Before a suffix to avoid confusion: bull-like

• After a prefix: co-pilot



• When the root word begins with a capital letter: un-American non-European

• When the root word begins with the same letter as the prefix: counter-revolutionary



• To avoid ambiguity. A Turkish - bath attendant

• Fractions and numbers between 21 and 99. Four-fifth Forty-five thousand and fifty-three


Punctuation - Colon

• After a formal salutation preceding a message: Ladies and gentlemen: It gives me

great pleasure to introduce . .


Punctuation - Colon

• To introduce material that explains, amplifies or interprets what precedes it: They didn't sleep last night: they

must be tired. It is raining heavily: the roads are

flooded.


Punctuation - Colon

• Before quotations in the text of a play. Romeo: It is the east, and Juliet is the

sun.

• With time in American English. 6:30 am


Punctuation - Colon

• Before lists. This is what you'll need to buy: a

notebook, some paper and pens.

• In biblical references, dates and ratios. 2:3 27:10:2005


Punctuation - Apostrophe

• In contraction: They're Didn't

• To form possessives with singular and plural nouns: The girl's dress The girls' dresses

Basic Grammar Articles and punctuation

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