Notice that the two halves of this sentence could each be sentences in their own right. They thus need to be separated with a comma and joining word. In the next example, though, we dont need a comma: We have finished the work and are looking forward to the weekend.

The halves of that sentence could not stand alone, so no comma was used.

3. Ellipsis:

The ellipsis is a series of three and ONLY THREE full stops used to mark missing words, an uncertain pause, or an abrupt interruption. Avoid the temptation to use six or seven dots it looks amateurish. For example, we write:

Niles: But Miss Fines age is only

Fran: Young! Miss Fines age is only young!

4. Excessive punctuation:

Only one exclamation mark or question mark should be used at a time. Consider the following over-punctuated examples:

Buy now!!!

Great bargains!!!!!!!!!! Excessive punctuation looks too much like hysteria and detracts from your credibility. Avoid it.

5. Headings:

For long works, establish a clear hierarchy of headings. Microsoft Words heading styles are great for this. (They also allow you to automatically create a table of contents.)

6. Hyphenating prefixes:

Most prefixes dont need a hyphen; i.e. we write coexist, not co-exist. There are exceptions, though. The prefixes self- and ex- are almost always hyphenated.

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