LECO52016. Christy Mariya Joy. "Mechanics of Writing".

          MECHANICS OF WRITING

Mechanics refers to the rules of written language, such as punctuation, spelling and capitalization. Its goal is to make the writing precise. It is directed to make the writing systematic and being concerned about how to be correct in spelling, punctuation, etc...

Here are some mechanics required to clearly communicate the ideas through writing.

PUNCTUATIONS

The primary purpose of punctuation is to ensure the clarity and readability of a writing. Although, it is a matter of personal preference and certain practices are optional, consistency is mandatory.

Apostrophe

It indicates contractions and possessives. The general practice is to form the possessive of monosyllabic proper names.

Colons

They indicate what follows will be an example, explanation or elaboration of what has just been said. It is commonly used to introduce quotations.

Commas

Commas are usually required between items in a series, between coordinate adjectives, before coordinating conjunctions joining independent clauses, around parenthetical elements and after fairly long phrases or clauses preceding the main clause. Comma and dash are never used together.

[Em] dashes

 They are used around parenthetical elements that require a number of internal commas and before a summarizing appositive.

Exclamation marks

They should be used sparingly in scholarly writing.

Hyphens

They are used to form some types of compound words, particularly compound adjectives that precede the word they modify. They also join prefixes to capitalized words and link pairs of coequal nouns.

Parentheses

They are used to enclose parenthetical remarks and to enclose some items in documentation.

Periods

Periods end sentences. They also come at the end of notes and after complete blocks of information in biographical citations.

Quotation marks

They are used in pairs to set off a direct speech, quotation or a phrase. The attention is being directed to the words enclosed in double quotation marks.

Semicolons

They are used to separate items in a series when some of the items require internal commas. They are also used between independent clauses that are not joined by a coordinating conjunction.

Slashes

They are used to separate lines of poetry and elements of dates, to enclose phonemic transcription and occasionally to separate alternative words.

Square brackets

They are used for an unavoidable parenthesis within a parenthesis, to enclose interpolations in a quotation.

SPELLING

Spelling, including hyphenation, must be consistent except in quotations. We should avoid dividing words at the end of a line. Where divisions are unavoidable, practice is to divide words according to pronunciation.

CAPITALIZATION

It is the writing of a word with its first letter in uppercase and the remaining letters in lowercase. The first word of a document and the first word after a period should be capitalized. Furthermore, capitalize proper nouns and adjectives derived from proper nouns.

The main function of capitals is to focus attention on particular elements within any group of people, places or things.

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