Punctuation: apostrophes, speech, commas

The idea

Apostrophes do two jobs. In a contraction they show missing letters, as in 'don't' for 'do not'. For possession they show belonging: 'the girl's coat' is one girl's coat, while 'the girls' coats' belongs to more than one girl.

Speech marks wrap the exact words spoken. The spoken words usually start with a capital letter, and a comma, full stop, question mark or exclamation mark goes inside the speech marks.

A fronted adverbial — a word or phrase at the front telling when, where or how — is followed by a comma: 'After lunch, we went home.' Extra information dropped into the middle of a sentence needs a pair of commas, one on each side. If you can name the job of every mark in a sentence, that sentence is very probably punctuated correctly.

Worked example

Punctuate this sentence correctly: On Tuesday Mrs Patel said dont forget your trainers

1. 'On Tuesday' is a fronted adverbial, so it needs a comma after it.
2. The exact words spoken go inside speech marks, starting with a capital letter.
3. 'Dont' is a contraction of 'do not', so it needs an apostrophe: don't.

Answer: On Tuesday, Mrs Patel said, "Don't forget your trainers."

Watch out

• Using an apostrophe for an ordinary plural, such as 'apple's' when you simply mean more than one apple.
• Forgetting the second comma when extra information sits in the middle of a sentence.