Page 125 - English for Writing Research Papers

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6.9 Use punctuation to show how words and concepts are
related to each other
Punctuation in English is used exclusively to show how words and concepts are
related to each other. This is not true of all languages.

Most languages have a rule that a comma cannot be used before and . This was once
a rule in English too, before people started to question its utility and simply asked
why not?

Here is an example from an email:

S1. *I will be free the whole of Monday and Tuesday and Thursday morning unless one of
the professors decides to arrange an extra class.

Does this mean that she will be free (a) all Monday and Tuesday, or (b) all Monday
and also Tuesday and Thursday mornings? If it is case (a), then the sentence would
be better rewritten as S2, and case (b) as S3:

S2. I will be free the whole of Monday and Tuesday, and (also) Thursday morning.
S3. I will be free the whole of Monday, and (also) Tuesday and Thursday morning.

If you have lists of items, you need to show how the various items relate to each other.

In some cases semicolons can be useful, as in S4.

S4. The languages were grouped as follows: Spanish, Italian and Romanian; German and
Dutch; and Swedish and Norwegian.

However, S4 would be better written as S5.

S5. The languages were allocated to three groups: (1) Spanish, Italian and Romanian; (2)
German and Dutch; and (3) Swedish and Norwegian.

Hyphens are used in English to show the relationship between words in a sequence,
which without a hyphen would be ambiguous. For example, what does S6 mean?
S6. We have a little used car in the garage.

Does it mean that we don't use the car very often (S7) or that we bought the car
second-hand (S8)? Hyphens can be used to make this differentiation clear.

S7. We have a little-used car in the garage.
S8. We have a little used-car in the garage.