If you're already getting pretty good writing marks, your teacher may have told you to begin using punctuation for effect - perhaps to create a feeling, or to manipulate the reader into reading it a certain way.
One way you can do this is by knowing the difference between commas, dashes and hyphens - and the best ways in which to use them. This video is a handy and VERY short guide to these three little marks:
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Alongside semi-colons, commas are an absolute nightmare to get right - but once you master them, your writing will take on a whole new level of meaning. They are extremely important punctuation marks that can alter the entire meaning of a sentence if you aren't careful...
Commas have had a bit of a bad rap recently, as people have continually assumed that they are simply there to mark a 'pause' or a 'stop' that 'isn't quite a full stop'. Sadly, this is the result of lazy teaching, as commas are much more complex than that!
Fundamentally, commas are there to provide clarification and to separate main clauses from words and phrases that modify them. Take the sentence: Carl went to the park. Let's say we want to modify this sentence to provide a time frame - so we add a sub-clause: Later that afternoon + Carl went to the park. The original sentence still works without the extra bit, so we need to separate the modifier from the main clause. However, the modifier cannot stand alone - it doesn't make sense: Later that afternoon X So we know that it is a sub-clause, or dependent clause. We mark these with commas. Later that afternoon, Carl went to the park. They are different to semi-colons because they mark sub-clauses, not breaks between full sentences. We can also use commas to mark internal clauses (sub-clauses squished into the middle of sentences): Carl, who had been bored all morning, went to the park. The main place that people forget to use commas is when they have used an adverb at the start of a sentence. However, the adverb is a modifier! Therefore, a comma is needed: Finally, Carl went to the park. If you can remember these rules, then you're making a good start. Here's a handy video outlining some further rules: TL;DR:
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