#Namely punctuation full#

The former identify persons or things mentioned in the main clause and are not marked by commas, while the latter provide additional information about someone or something that has already been identified and are always given in commas. Such wrong use of the comma may be caused by the transfer of native (Slavic) syntactic and punctuation patterns.Ī more complicated type of mistake occurs when nonnative authors are unable to distinguish between the so-called identifying and non-identifying clauses, which begin with who, whose, whom, and which. One of the most common mistakes relates to inserting comma before a relative clause which begins with that, as in the following example: We consider side effects, that are characteristic of stimulating agents. This particularly refers to the comma ‒ a source of major difficulties for non-Anglophone authors, who tend either to overuse or underuse this frequent punctuation mark. While not all of these punctuation marks cause problems in research writing, some appear to be rather troublesome.

#Namely punctuation full#

Punctuation marks include the period (.), known in British English as a full stop, comma (,), semicolon ( ), colon (:), dash (‒), hyphen (-), square brackets (), braces (also called “brackets”) (), parentheses (), apostrophe (’), quotation marks (“ ”) or inverted commas in British English (‘ ’), question mark (?), exclamation point or mark (!), ellipsis (…), and slash (/). The punctuation problems described below are generally similar to those faced by authors all over the globalized world. The majority of the examples are taken from the manuscripts drafted by Slavic biomedical researchers. Sharing this vision of the significance of punctuation for clear and rhetorically effective research writing, I will further try, proceeding from my pedagogical and ad hoc editor's experience, to pinpoint and illustrate typical mistakes made by nonnative authors. Furthermore, an incorrectly punctuated text may look careless and damaging to the authors' reputation. 6 Its correct use is extremely important for research writing, where the comprehension of ideas, complicated in itself, may be aggravated by improper punctuation. As such, punctuation is one of the authors' tools for conveying meaning and facilitating the readers' understanding of the text.

4Ĭorrect punctuation is important because of the following functions 5: 1) it indicates the beginning and end of textual units and connects them through the presence or absence of punctuation marks 2) it is used for emphasizing or adding tone. In fact, some top journals have switched to flexible instructions, displaying greater tolerance of minor language inconsistencies in the writing of non-Anglophone researchers. 3 Finally, with the unprecedented growth of the number of nonnative English speakers, certain deviations from language style and punctuation standards seem to become more accepted.

2 Furthermore, there is a wide variation in the use of punctuation even by native English speakers due to insufficient attention to its main rules in language classes. Firstly, punctuation is often viewed as a less important subject when compared to other areas of writing difficulties, 1 such as organization of scientific ideas, choice of persuasion strategies, text structure, sentence grammar, and appropriate style. There are a number of factors complicating the current situation with often overlooked punctuation mistakes. Punctuation mistakes of non-Anglophone researchers often remain unnoticed and unaddressed by researchers themselves, peer reviewers, journal editors, and English language instructors.