Too many people sincerely do not understand why punctuation marks are needed . This is especially true for the young generation, which “scribbles” messages on friends on social networks, without even thinking about the fact that a phrase can be interpreted in two ways, if you do not put an elementary comma in the right place. Here's how you can understand, for example, this phrase: "Masha was sitting on a bench that was standing under a tree and was waiting for her friend"? If you can still guess that the bench was under the tree, despite the fact that the comma after the word “bench” is still needed, then there is a reasonable question about who was waiting for the girlfriend, Masha or the bench. And even if it’s fashionable now and in all kinds of forums to write deliberately illiterate, in real life, in which people study and work, mistakes are unacceptable. This is especially true for business documentation: a contract written with errors will certainly cast doubt on either the reliability of the company or the intelligence of the person who made this contract. Therefore, one should not even doubt: punctuation in Russian, just like spelling, is simply necessary. Because of one comma incorrectly set (or not set at all), an important sentence either loses all meaning or acquires a completely different one.
Listen to how you talk: you periodically pause between words or sentences, make your speech with different intonations (interrogative, exclamatory, etc.), highlight important points with a special voice ... Why not to do some kind of writing same? After all, the functions of punctuation marks consist precisely in highlighting something important, giving the text one or another emotional coloring and meaning.
For example, commas usually stand out:
- appeals ("Hello, Vasya, how are you?");
- introductory words (probably, undoubtedly, therefore, etc.);
- transfers (“We live at home: a cat, a dog, two parrots, a canary and a hamster”);
- comparisons (“She's cunning, like a fox”);
- participial and participial turnovers (“the cargo sent to the station” (participial), “approaching the house, I felt a chill” (participle);
- simple sentences, interconnected in terms of complexity (“Kolya knocked on the door of the apartment, which was indicated in the address, and soon opened to him”).
If everything is clear with commas, let's move on to the next question, which may also not be clear to everyone: why do we need punctuation marks, such as a colon and a dash? There is nothing complicated here, because the first sign is placed in the following cases:
- before making a listing (“In the closet hung: dresses, coats, skirts, jackets”);
- before a direct speech or the beginning of a dialogue (“And then Petya said:“ I will not go to this house ”);
- before giving an explanation of something (“Katya from the window saw an entertaining picture: Murzik was eating from a bowl of Bobik, who was sitting on the sidelines and regretfully watching the meat that the owner gave him was disappearing”).
A dash is set in cases if:
- there is no connection between two nouns (“All life is a game”);
- the sentence contains the words “this”, “means”, “here” (“Dreams are a reflection of our thoughts and desires”, “To love means to live”);
- Intonation is necessary between one or another member of the sentence (“This is a giant of thought and a person close to the emperor”).
Of course, these are far from all the cases in which a dash is placed; there are much more of them, but the meaning, we think, is understandable.
Why do we need punctuation marks such as question marks and exclamation marks? Of course, in order to emphasize the necessary intonation. If you want to ask a question, then, of course, the corresponding sign at the end of the sentence will be more than appropriate. If you express violent emotions in your letter, then the exclamation mark will help your opponent understand this. It is worth noting that, according to the rules of punctuation, you can not put more than three exclamation points.
I want to believe that now it has become more clear to you why punctuation marks are needed in sentences, and we hope that from now on you will begin to use them more actively and correctly.