Premise

Why? Who Cares?

Consider the idea that “advanced punctuation” is merely using enhanced punctuation techniques to more accurately and illustratively translate your thoughts from your mind out into the world. Sure, you can always just throw semicolons, em dashes, and parentheses into your writing to make it look spicier. But the whole point of adding these elements is to enhance the nuance of how you want audiences to perceive your tone, pacing, and emphasis. In short, how they perceive how you perceive things.

Simply put: if you want to really, finally understand what advanced punctuation is—and how it works—just take the half an hour or so to actually and fully read through these explanations and examples! Thirty minutes is a fair tradeoff for a lifetime of being able to express yourself much more effectively!

Okay, Fine; I’ll read: So What the Heck is “Advanced Punctuation” Exactly?

Advanced Punctuation is punctuation that serves to add a particular emphasis or distinction to your sentences in one or more of the following ways. Consider these effects:

1. Emphasis of Tone

You can greatly emphasize the “tone” of a sentence through certain advanced punctuation. Just look at these two sentences side-by-side:

“Be here by 8:30.” or “Be here by 8:30!”

Changes: Italicizing the word “by” in this example serves to emphasize the importance by which you need to arrive—as does adding the exclamation point in emphasizing the whole idea! 

Note that italicizing keywords for emphasis can have lots of other effects, which are relative to the context of the sentence. E.g., “I hate our current mayor,” sounds inherently less emphatic than, “I hate our “current” mayor.” The latter example expresses that you “really hate” the current major, without outright stating it that way. And quoting the word “current” implies that this status is temporary. I.e., maybe this mayor will be/should be removed from office.

2. Definition of Ideas

You can very much influence the “definition” of an idea through certain advanced punctuation. Just look at these two sentences side-by-side:

“I’m sorry you’re my friend.” or “I’m sorry; you’re my friend.”

Changes: By adding a semicolon, you’re clarifying the meaning of the sentence. In the first example, the statement reads as if you’re saying that “I am sorry that you are my friend,” implying that you rather the person not be your friend.

In the second example, however, you’re clarifying a contrast via separating these statements, yet still linking a strong reflective meaning between the ideas via semicolons. And there’s a lot of potential connotation here, depending upon the situation. I.e., “I am sorry [for something that I did to you]; I am sorry about this because you are indeed my friend.” Typically, when you can express so much deeper meaning like this in so fewer words, it leads to richer, more impactful writing.

3. Regulation of Pacing

You can also regulate the progression and importance of ideas more clearly. Just look at these two sentences side-by-side:

Over time, we see how students are still impacted by sleep deprivation throughout their college days, and Tara’s example is perfect because we get to hear a modern and relatively recent point of view from a college student who entered this new chapter during a global pandemic, which not only messed up how academic systems worked and work now but the world in general is still recovering from the economical, social, and political effects of this deadly outbreak.

or

Over time, we see how students are still impacted by sleep deprivation throughout their college days. Tara’s example is perfect because we get to hear a modern and relatively recent point of view from a college student who entered this new chapter during a global pandemic—which not only messed up how academic systems worked (and work now), but the world in general is still recovering from the economical, social, and political effects of this deadly outbreak.

There are lots of other ways and specific techniques to use, but these are the major effects in terms of why it’s well worth learning how and why advanced punctuation can really enrich your expression personally and professionally! Moving on, we’ll look at some of these tools.

Sources of Frustration

If you—like many other students—hate writing, one of the reasons probably stems from the lack of meaningful comments from teachers over the years, like “Use more punctuation!” But what in the world does that mean? And perhaps more importantly, why?

Punctuation is often taught as “right” or “wrong.” But that’s just the start of its purpose. Obviously, having clear and correct punctuation is useful in order to identify sentence-level ideas if you dont like you can see that im doing midway through this sentence now it becomes very distracting at least and probably eventually confusing the more I runon in this sentence without regulating the pacing of ideas through periods apostrophes commas etc you get the idea see what I mean?

Okay, that was probably torturous to read—but that’s the point! Making sure to incorporate all those aforementioned punctuations, is, at the very least, what you want to do. But then, how do you decide which ones to choose from when you have options?

Examples

Okay, Then What Are My Options?

When we talk about types of advanced punctuation, we’re usually talking about tools that do more than just our most common friends: commas and periods. There are a ton of punctuation marks that you can use to your emphasizing advantage. Some of these you may already be well familiar with, like exclamation points! But there are plenty of others that you’ve likely seen—and maybe even have felt the effects of—even if you’re not sure how to employ them yourself.

Here’s a list of several of the most common (and potentially effective) advanced punctuation tools you can use:

Parentheses:

Used to insert referential or clarifying information. This is why you see parentheses for citations too. The citation doesn’t usually impact the meaning of a sentence, but it does identify who the source is. But again, parentheses can also be used to provide clarifying information that we feel like is simply useful to more clearly understand a point being made. This extra information usually doesn’t add any commentary vital to understanding the sentence’s main idea.

Example:

No advanced punctuation: “The artists who received the award, Bob Ross and Childish Gambino, are probably the most popularly known as well.”

Advanced punctuation: “The artists who received the award (Bob Ross and Childish Gambino) are probably the most popularly known as well.”

Effect: Either example is technically “correct.” But the latter one using parenthesis as a form of advanced punctuation serves to make the information appear more “referential.” I.e., it’s still important information, but it’s not as important as the main point of the sentence. 

Note: this why it’s so important to make sure that you format citations correctly. You don’t want your readers to confuse advanced punctuation like we see here above with an information citation such as used with MLA, APA, etc. For example, if you happened to be citing Bob Ross and Childish Gambino as the authors of a source, you would cite them as (Ross and Gambino) or (Ross & Gambino, 2021) for MLA and APA style respectively. A reader who is familiar with either citation style (and expects to see them implemented in your work) will know that these are source citations rather than parentheses for interesting additional information.

Example:

No advanced punctuation: “The governor, who previously served as the state attorney general, vetoed the police reform bill as his first act in office.”

Advanced punctuation: “The governor (previously the state attorney general) vetoed the police reform bill as his first act in office.”

Effect: The second example with advanced punctuation sounds more like just adding the clarification in for reference. I.e., it’s like saying, “just so you’re aware,” in case this detail is important for a technical or logistical understanding of the subject matter.

Em dashes:

Are used to insert non-essential clauses within sentences or add extra commentary at the end of complete sentences. I.e., whereas the parentheses example above just identifies or clarifies referential information, the em dashes here are used more often to highlight an important point of relevant commentary that impacts our inherent understanding of the value of the idea being expressed. You can choose this when you want a point of commentary or note of emphasis within a larger, already complete idea.

Example:

No advanced punctuation: “The monkeys, none of whom were related, showed a desire to share the same house all the same.”

Advanced punctuation: “The monkeys—none of whom were related—showed a desire to share the same house all the same.”

Effect: The commas in the first example make the information that “none of these monkeys were related” seem less important and more a part of the overall point of the sentence—whereas the em dash example literally adds space via the longer dash, to help “off-set” this information visually, thus highlighting that this detail is special. Perhaps in the context of this example, you really want your reader to notice how strange it is that these monkeys weren’t related. Maybe you explain this context more in the next sentence(s), but you can still highlight that emphasis here in this way. This would be a perfect reason to use em dashes.

Example:

No advanced punctuation: “Last week’s homework was among the more meaningless assignments he had done in college, at least so far since switching to Computer Science.”

Advanced punctuation: “Last week’s homework was among the more meaningless assignments he had done in college—at least so far since switching to Computer Science.”

Effect: Similar to the effect in the previous example, switching the comma to an em dash increases the emphasis of your additional commentary. In this case: the implication that “While this homework was indeed useless, he expects there to be much more useless homework after switching to computer science.”

Italics:

Are used to highlight keywords for emphasis. This emphasis can manifest in many ways depending upon the context of the situation.

Example:

No advanced punctuation: “He didn’t think that the movie was that bad.”

Advanced punctuation: “He didn’t think that the movie was that bad.”

Effect: The impact here should be really clear. Italicizing the word “that” can have various contextual effects. It seems the most likely potential one might be something like “He thought that the movie was bad. However, he did not think that it was as bad as other viewers have expressed.” See how you can relate all of this context by just italicizing a keyword instead?

Example:

No advanced punctuation: “These people are just like you and me.”

Advanced punctuation: “These people are just like you and me.”

Effect: Obviously, the emphasis here seems to be a commentative one: whoever these people are, they are very much like the speakers. Again, italicizing this keyword relates this connotation without the need for extraneous explanation.

Okay, Then What Are Some Examples of All These Elements Together?

Good question! Let’s look at an example: one with no advanced punctuation, and then the same one but with lots added in.

The article’s author, James Clarence, is certainly well-meaning, but he doesn’t seem to care much about offering an alternative viewpoint. Readers who don’t already agree with him, especially those who feel very strongly the opposite, might even be offended by his lack of care in this regard. Yet he certainly shows why passionate pleas matter. This is evident by the personal examples that he includes, but there’s definitely more to be done here, especially if he wants to appeal to a broader audience of college students.

Analytically, this paragraph appears just fine and peachy. But now let’s dazzle it up with some advanced punctuation—and without even switching any words or phrases around. Remember as you read these changes to consider how aspects of the a) Emphasis of Tone, b) Definition of Ideas, and, c) Regulation of Pacing are all impacted by these changes. We’ll even bold and highlight these changes in red so you can see them more clearly:

The article’s author (James Clarence) is certainly well-meaning, but he doesn’t seem to care much about offering an alternative viewpoint. Readers who don’t already agree with him—especially those who feel very strongly the opposite—might even be offended by his lack of care in this regard. Yet he certainly shows why passionate pleas matter; this is evident by the personal examples that he includes. But there’s definitely more to be done here—especially if he wants to appeal to a broader audience: college students.

Clearly, you can see a lot has been changed here. But why? Let’s go through line by line and see the effect of each particular change from our regular friend the “comma” to more advanced forms of punctuation.

• “The article’s author (James Clarence) is certainly well-meaning…”
  • Change: adding the parentheses clarifies a mere technical detail. I.e., it reminds us of the information about whom we are discussing.
• “Readers who don’t already agree with him—–especially those who feel very strongly the opposite—might even be offended by his lack of care in this regard.”
  • Change: inserts a clarification of an idea to emphasize the impact of analysis. In this case: which types of readers are important for us to know are the ones being affected.
• “Yet he certainly shows why passionate pleas matter; this is evident by the personal examples that he includes.”
  • Change: italicizes the word “matter” to emphasize that it “very much” matters. The semicolon also merges these ideas more closely to express how “true” and or “intimately related/reflected” these ideas are.
• “But there’s definitely more to be done here—especially if he wants to appeal to a broader audience: college students.”
  • Change: another em dash to add an impactful clause of commentary at the end of this sentence. But the colon is also used to introduce an idea to a “prompt.” I.e., if I write a sentence in a way that presents an “answer” to be given, you can give that answer at the end of the sentence with a colon to clearly identify it. E.g., “There’s only one thing I like more in the world than advanced punctuation: watching Quentin Tarantino movies while I’m working on such explanations.”

Further Considerations

• Congratulations! If you’ve actually taken the time to read all these examples, then you’re well on your way to becoming an expert at using advanced punctuation. Go back to our main section on grammar and punctuation to check out how many of these ideas mentioned here—and more—can be used in further specific ways!
• Wait, a minute… Can’t AI do all this for me?? Of course it can! But that doesn’t mean that it can do it well—or that it can express the emphasis that you really mean. And none of this even considers the fact that using advanced punctuation like this helps you develop what you really think about your own ideas.
• Wait again… Can you explain that last point a little more? Sure! There’s actually some really great research about this effect that we won’t bore you with now. But rest assured, thinking about how you pace, highlight, and emphasize your ideas with advanced punctuation becomes a transferable skill in how you express your ideas in other contexts, whether these be through presentations, conversations, or just in your own mind to yourself! If you want some further explanation though, we have an article about AI usage here.

Subscribe below with your email for new topics like this!