Kia ora – welcome to the course!

Nau mai haere mai ki tēnei akomanga – welcome to this course.

We are so excited to have you on board! Whether English is their first language or their tenth, many people have difficulty with punctuation marks. You are not alone.

This short course focuses on key challenges in English punctuation. Two of the most problematic punctuation marks are apostrophes and commas. We will tackle these using examples and learning-oriented quizzes, to help build your confidence.

We will intersperse this with guidance on some other commonly used punctuation marks.

A note on the type of English used in New Zealand

New Zealand mostly uses British English, so please bear this in mind throughout the course.

A note on recommended resources

You can also investigate our recommended resources. Use these to consolidate your learning during this course and beyond.

A note on the course structure

As mentioned, we tackle the two trickiest punctuation marks (comma and apostrophe) across two weeks:

We provide a glossary and many examples of practical use.

At the end of each section of this topic, we provide a recap of the main points. These are compiled into one document that you can download as a complete topic recap list at the end of the course.

On completion of this short course, you should be able to:

• apply conventional uses of the comma.
• correctly use apostrophes.
• correctly use a range of other punctuation, including semicolons, colons, hyphens, and en and em dashes.

You’ll master these punctuation marks in no time!

In the next step, you can join a discussion group where we introduce ourselves. You can also take part in a poll where we invite all learners to pick their most problematic punctuation mark.

See you in the Introductions forum!

Enjoy your journey – Kia pai tō haerenga.