The Turner Ink blog contains rants, bloopers, observations and opinions. It also has handy tips on grammar and punctuation such as colons: semicolons; and full stops. As well as some very useful ‘how tos’. Feel free to leave comments. Be nice though.

Turner Ink

Copywriting Services London

Posts tagged 'semicolons'

Turner Ink Christmas card bloopers – the answers

23rd
Dec
by Sarah Turner

Old Typewriter smallSo for those of you that received a Turner Ink Xmas card this year, these are the bloopers. How many did you get?

 

A Christmas tail [A classic homonym. It should be tale.]

Santa was having a bad day. 4 [up to number 10, spell out the number. So Four] of his elfs [elves] were throwing a sickie and the work experience elves werent [don't forget the apostrophe, weren't] producing toys fast enough. Santa was beginning to feel the pressure.

His blog needed updating. He hadn’t checked twitter [brand name, so Twitter] for at least 20 minites [minutes]. And people were giving him greif [grief] on Facebook.

Than [then], as he began to load his slay [another homonym, sleigh] one of the boards broke. And several large bags from Amazon fell to the ground: [a comma here not a colon] scattering their contents all over the place. Needless to say, santa [Cap S, Santa] was not in the best of moods.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang and he went to the door expecting another problem. But when he opened it; [comma here not a semicolon] there was just a little angle [like 18 degrees? Geddit? Yes, it should be angel of course] with a great big christmas [Christmas] tree.

The angel greeted him very cheerfully: [So lots of newspapers and mags have a colon to introduce speech. It's not needed though. A comma would suffice.]  “Merry Christmas Santa claus [cap C, Claus]. Isn’t it just a wonderful day [question mark needed]. I have a beautiful tree for you. See, isn’t its [it] just the loveliest Christmas Tree [lower case t, tree] you’ve ever seen? Where would you like me to put it?’ [You started with double speech marks, you need to end with double speech marks.]

And that’s how the angel on top of the Christmas tree tradition began.

Hands up who circled the And and But at the beginning of a sentence as an error? Back of the class!

Happy Christmas anyway.


Tags: capital letters, colons, commas, homonyms, semicolons
Posted in Bloopers, Word stuff | comments icon 1 Comment »

Is the education system failing our children?

8th
Oct
by Sarah Turner

Depressing news in The Independent this week: Overseas students are better at English than British students.

According to Professor Bernard Lamb, who carried out the research, British undergraduates are nearly three times more likely to make errors in written English than those from overseas.

Depressing? Yes. Surprising? No.

After spending a year studying the written work of his students, Lamb was appalled by spelling errors such as flourescence, alot, seperate, yeild, relevent and introduications.

Grammatical errors included ‘done by my partner and I’ and ‘a women’. Whilst poor punctuation ranged from the misuse of semicolons to a complete lack of possessive apostrophes.

The Queen’s English Society, of which Lamb is president, blames the errors on a “widespread deterioration in standards.”

Lamb goes on to say that “we need to raise the very poor standards of English by more demanding syllabuses and exams, more explicit teaching and examining of English (including grammar, spelling and punctuation) and by consistent correction of errors by teachers of all subjects.”

And I couldn’t agree more.

The wishy washy liberalism that has pervaded our education system means there’s a reluctance to correct written work. There seems to be a belief that pointing out a kid’s poor spelling, sloppy punctuation or bad grammar will somehow thwart that child’s creativity.

Here’s the news: it won’t.

Good grammar and punctuation skills are the foundation on which great writing is built. Kids that get the ‘rules’ enjoy the act of writing a whole lot more. It’s like explaining the offside rule to a kid who wants to be footballer; the more he understands the game the more fun it is.

Lamb demands a more “consistent correction of errors by teachers”. But the real worry is that teachers themselves have a poor understanding of the English language.

Take a look at this picture sent to me by Twitter pal @racinghippo. This came home with his daughter’s homework this week. Scary, isn’t it?

This week's homework


Tags: apostrophes, semicolons, writing technique
Posted in Grammar tips, Punctuation tips, Word stuff | comments icon 5 Comments »

What’s a semicolon and when can you use one?

31st
Jul
by Sarah Turner

The semicolon is a seriously abused and underused bit of punctuation.  And often abandoned (wrongly) in favour of the colon or the comma. 

But once you know how to use it you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. Seriously. It’s that handy.

Ok, so here’s a brief overview to get you on your way. The semicolon has two main uses.

1. It can join two complete sentences that are closely related:

My mother loved the flowers; the florist delivered them today.
I like going to London; the dollar is so strong against the pound.
I love the colour blue on me; white makes me look fat. 

2. It can separate a long list of items. Especially useful if some of the items in the list contain ‘and’ or the list is complex:

We have visited many islands in the Caribbean: Barbados; Turks and Caicos; Bahamas; and Trinidad and Tobago.
A few people are attending the meeting: Elaine Johnson, marketing co-ordinator; Sam Monroe, head of retail in Brussells; Don Smith; and Mary Jackson, project manager, London office.

Should you use a semicolon before the last ‘and’? Yes. Should you use a capital letter after the semicolon. Nope. Unless it’s a proper noun of course.

A client once told me that my use of a semicolon was, and I quote, ‘preposterous’. But when questioned (ok, cross examined and then beaten soundly) he was unable to explain when a semicolon should be used. Don’t be that client.


Tags: semicolons
Posted in Punctuation tips | comments icon 1 Comment »

Punctuation: Make it a part of your daily workout

14th
Apr
by Sarah Turner

Used correctly, punctuation can often be the difference between a blah blah statement and a really powerful headline. Take this sign at my local gym.

Weight Loss sign

Our weight loss course lasts 12 weeks and the results could last a lifetime.

It’s not wrong. It’s just a bit dull. So what’s missing? How about a semicolon? A semicolon joins two complete sentences which are closely related.  

Our weight loss course lasts 12 weeks; the results could last a lifetime.

Yep, that’s getting better. This has got much more of a woo-hoo about it. It’s just 12 weeks! But you might stay thin, like, for-ever.

But I think what we really need here is a colon. Remember, a colon is used to show what comes after is an explanation or elaboration of what comes before. It’s a bit of a taa-daa! A drum roll if you like. Take a look.

Our weight loss course lasts 12 weeks: the results could last a lifetime.

Oooh now you’re talking. This has way more oomph. You could have the body of a model for the rest of your life just by turning up for 12 weeks. Awesome. Now, where do I sign-up?


Tags: colons, semicolons
Posted in Punctuation tips | comments icon No comments yet »

Our punctuation has gone missing. Reward offered

31st
Mar
by Sarah Turner

Trawling the interwebs this week I came across this little beauty (names have been removed to protect the innocent).

There are three issues that are consistently addressed in our work: client needs, purpose, cost + the site, its context, history + materials, light, volume.

Hmmmm. I’m guessing there’s punctuation missing. Some semicolons probably. Or a comma or six.  

But nope, I have no idea what they mean either.


Tags: semicolons
Posted in Bloopers, Punctuation tips | comments icon No comments yet »

 

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