Charles Dube
USE of capital letters — Using capital letters seems obvious to many people. Most learners do not pay much attention when lessons involving these are conducted in class only to be awakened when discovering the valuable marks they would have thrown away because they think they know. Use capital letters at the start of sentences. Every sentence starts with a capital letter. In a hand-written exercise make sure that your capital letters are obvious — they should be twice as big as normal letters.
Look at this: The bus left early this morning. It was seen off by the senior teacher and I think it will reach town in a few minutes from now. Both of these sentences need capital letters at the beginning. “I” has a capital letter wherever you use it. Some words always start with a capital letter, even in the middle of a sentence: people’s names and titles, example, Doctor Moyo, names of organisations — National Army.
Titles of books and plays — English for Zimbabwe, Harvest of Thorns Classic: A play. Towns and names of places: Bulawayo, Matopo. Note: short words like “of”, “the” and “upon” do not have capital letters when you name titles of books and plays, towns and names of places Use capital letters when you name countries, nationalities and languages, examples: country — Zimbabwe, nationality — Zimbabwean.
Religions, the names of gods and religious believers are also capitalised. For example, Hinduism is a religion. Muslims worship Allah. Of course we capitalise names of days and months: Monday, Friday, March, June and public holidays and religious days are capitalised as well: Easter, Christmas. Names for particular people, places and things are called proper nouns. Capitalise all proper nouns. Capitalising some words can be tricky.
Some nouns are capitalised sometimes, but not at other times. Some queens head their countries’ governments. The Queen heads the government. If you are talking about queens in general, you do not need a capital letter. If you are taking about a particular queen, you need a capital letter. Ruth is a proper noun with a capital “R-’’. This seems very simple, but you still need to make sure you know when you add a capital letter at the beginning of words.
Use punctuation to finish sentences correctly, otherwise you will be throwing marks away if you do not. Full stops end sentences. If you are writing an essay, you finish your sentences with a full stop. Many learners ignore these important facts hence throw away valuable marks in the examinations. A full stop or period is an end mark together with a question mark, or exclamation point. Question marks show the end of a question.
Question marks show that you are asking a question. Where is my book? Some sentences tell you about a question but do not actually ask one. The boy asks, the girl where his food is. This is not actually asking a question, so there is no question mark. It is a statement about what the boy does — it just needs a full stop. Exclamations show strong emotions, or emphasise something. You should not need to use exclamation marks in your essays, unless you are quoting a line which uses one.
If you use exclamation marks in your writing, never use more than one to end a sentence. Example: What a surprise! This incorrect, but, what a surprise! Is correct. Do not use exclamation marks too often — they lose their impact. Use exclamations and questions correctly to maximise marks. You are reminded that in the examination you will mainly use full stops, but that does not mean you do not have to learn about exclamation and question marks.
Remember this bit: A question mark should be placed inside the closing quotation marks when the quotation is a question. Otherwise, it should be placed outside the closing quotation marks.
We have discussed the use of commas many times before, but still most learners get confused when using it. Without commas lists would be a jumbled up mess, and long sentences would not make much sense. Commas separate items in a list. A list that does not contain commas is hard to understand. She bought sugar shoe polish cabbages at the shop. This sentence is incorrect. Add a comma after each item to make your list clear.
She bought sugar, shoe polish and cabbages at the shop. Put “and’ or “or” between the last two items in the list. Remember, you do not need to use a comma before the final “and” or “or”. You only need to use commas in lists of three or more items. Use commas to separate two adjectives next to each other which could be separated by “and”. He was a cruel, stern master. You could put “and” between cruel and stern, so you need a comma.
His car is light blue in colour. You could not put “and” between light and blue, so you do not need a comma. Commas can also separate extra information. Use a pair of commas to separate extra information in the middle of a sentence. Look at this example: The animals, led by Snowball, planned a revolution. Commas used here enclose extra information — led by Snowball. Make sure you know how to use commas properly as you might also use them in your essays.
Be careful though, too many commas and your writing will not flow; too few commas and your writing might not make sense. Keep practising until you get all the lessons you learn right. Use the functional approach than to learn words in isolation. Practise the use of all parts of speech through sentences or writing essays and you will not regret your efforts.
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