Hey teacher, what's that weird thing with a period on top and a comma on the bottom? If you've ever received a question like this, it may be time to review the handout on semi-colons, colons, and dashes. Part of a larger series of writing worksheets from The Writing Center at UNC, the great resource helps individuals discover the various uses for each punctuation mark, as well as how to check for mistakes in a paper.

Concepts

colons, semicolons, dashes, punctuation

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Additional Tags

english language arts

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Instructional Ideas

• Remove the punctuation from a variety of sentences and see how quickly learners add it back in

Classroom Considerations

• Most standard keyboards do not contain an em dash key, so you should review the shortcut before sharing the handout
• Requires understanding of elements of basic sentence construction, such as dependent and independent clauses

Pros

• Provides multiple examples to support a variety of uses
• Clearly separates the content into three different sections based on individual punctuation marks

Cons

• Missing graphics or other visual components to make it more interesting to read

Common Core

W.9-10.2.a W.9-10.2.b W.11-12.2.a