pop quiz
The following paragraph contains two punctuation errors and, in my opinion, a punctuation mistake as well. So, if I were correcting this, I would make three marks. Can you find them?
American Heritage Girls Organization is a scouting program for girls that supports the traditional values of God, Family and Country. AHG’s programming promotes the Judeo-Christian values upon which our country was founded and strives to enhance the girls life experiences with fun filled activities supervised by trained adults, supported by family members and implemented by members. AHG’s programming provides life skills, leadership skills and character building through a traditional troop setting.
You got me on this one. I marked my guesses, but my semi-colon usage has always been poor. I would also add commas before the 3 ‘and’ phrases of 3 items – but that is my pet peeve. Also wanted to do something with the ‘values of’ since they are not ‘God’s values’ that are being referred to but not sure if the colon was the right way to do it.
American Heritage Girls
Organizationis a scouting program for girls that supports the traditional values of: God, Family and Country. AHG’s programming promotes the Judeo-Christian values upon which our country was founded and strives to enhance the girls‘ life experiences with fun filled activities; supervised by trained adults, supported by family members and implemented by members. AHG’s programming provides life skills, leadership skills and character building through a traditional troop setting.Hm, for you, a B. :) I do admit I would rework and rephrase some of the things you pointed out (leaving out ‘Organization’ and fixing the implied “values of God”), but I was referring strickly to errors, not things that needed to be tweaked. The third comma in a series was the “mistake” I referred to; it cannot, unfortunately, be called an error.
You did catch the most glaring and horrendous error: the life experiences belong to the girls. Apostrophes, people! They are not difficult! :)
Semicolons are beautiful things. Use a semicolon to avoid the common problem of comma splices (two sentences joined by only a comma, such as “It rained, it poured”). A semicolon could more accurately be thought of as a semiperiod. It separates two independant clauses (complete sentences) — so it is stronger than a comma, but weaker than a period. Its other unique function is to separate items in a list when one or more of those items contains a comma itself.
Also, avoid the common error of colons. A colon says “that is”; it introduces a list or restatement of the preceding phrase. However, a colon must be preceded by a complete sentence (a complete sentence need not proceed it). So, your use above is incorrect. The correct way to use a colon in that situation would be to write “…supports tradtional values: God, family, and country.” The sentence would be complete if you stopped at “values,” but the proceeding phrase adds clarification.
Yes, come to think of it, family and country should not be capitalized, either.
I leave the pop quiz still open. There is one subtle punctuation error. Hint: it is punctuation that needs to be added. I have been contemplating writing a post on this piece of punctuation, too…
“strickly”? Have you been reading too much Penrod or sumpthing?
Anyway, for the remaining error, I vote for a hyphen between “fun” and “filled”. Are we talking about filled activities (whatever that means) that are fun, or activities that are filled with fun?
The other thing I want to know is what language AHG is written in and/or what network AHG is broadcast on. “AHG programming”?
Correct! A hyphen is required!
If apostrophes are the most misused punctuation, then hyphens are the most underused punctuation. And there is a difference between a hyphen and a dash — do not confuse them! (error: there is a difference between a hyphen and a dash-do not confuse them!)
This concludes the quiz of the Emergency Punctuation Services…if this had been an actual emergency…no, wait, punctuation suffers severe emergencies across the nation at almost every press of the keyboard or stroking of ink. Sigh.