Writing & Punctuation: How to use COLONS & SEMICOLONS

Welcome back to engVid with me, Benjamin. Today's lesson is a writing one that is going

to really show that you are a sophisticated writer. That means that you are intelligent

and that you've got a good understanding of English grammar because you can use these

two key punctuation marks. Introducing on my right the semi-colon. Looks a little bit

like this, comma with a full stop on top (;), and on my left the colon. No, I'm not talking

about your posterior; I am talking about this: Dot, dot (:). Okay.

First the semi-colon. What's it used for? A semi-colon is used to replace a conjunction

or full stop. Okay? So rather than lots of boring, short sentences, I spice things up

by putting in a semi-colon. What it does is it connects two closely related ideas. So,

instead of saying: "They love chocolate."-full stop-"I can't stand it." or: "They love chocolate,

and I can't stand it", you put a semi-colon in there. It just... It just gives it better

effect. It's just... It's just more interesting the way it sounds and the way it looks on

the page. Second way in which we use a semi-colon: To separate items in a list. For example,

this is talking about a pudding that I'm making, a dessert if you don't use this English word,

here. "For the pudding, I need:" Okay? Spot the colon; we'll talk about that in a moment.

Now we are putting the semi-colons to separate the ingredients for the pudding. "Berries,

fresh summer ones;" okay? So that's one... It's the berries, this is the description

of the berries. Okay? I put the semi-colon after I finish talking about the berries.

"...milk", now let's give a little bit of detail about the milk: "full-fat milk;" always

tastier. Okay? Put a semi-colon after that. "...a new whisk, because I stood on the last",

okay? "...and", okay? So we don't need a semi-colon here because we're using "and", and then you

put the final secret ingredient.

Let's move over to the colon. Colons introduce lists, like we have just seen here: "This

is what I need for my pudding:" dong, dong dong, now I'm going to put my list. Colons

isolate words to create emphasis. "He knew what he was feeling: fear." You might want

to have a look at my lesson on suspense and tension writing, because we cover lots of

sentences like this. Colons also introduce quotes. So if you're doing an academic essay,

and you're saying: "Idea, idea, idea, idea, idea", oo, now I need to take someone else's

idea and write, and sort of put it in speech marks. Before you use that person's words,

yup, you use the colon. Okay? So if I was writing an essay about Shakespeare, just before

I used Shakespeare's words, I would put the colon. Okay, we're going to look at a passage

now and we're going to think about when we should use a semi-colon and when we should

use a colon.

So here we are with a little passage that I have just written for you. I'll read it

out to you. As I'm reading it, I want you to think of where the semi-colons and colons

should go. "You need to do three things to be successful in English, practice with native

speakers, learn and revise your vocab, and master your grammar. It helps enormously to

visit the U.K., you'll understand the culture. Together we can achieve fluency, together

we can grow." Hmm. What do we think about that? Okay, so let's have a look. "You need

to do three things to be successful in English", and then it starts saying what those things

are. So what we have here is the start of a list. Remember: If you're introducing a

list, you need to put a colon. There we are, a colon to introduce my list. Now we have

three things that we need to do to get better at English. What do we do to separate items

in a list? That's right, you put your semi-colon, so we'll just put a dot there, one there,

and then you don't need one here. "It helps enormously to visit the U.K., you'll understand

the culture." So, this here we're starting an explanation, we're giving an important

reason, so I would say that a colon is required there. Also note that the dot there, the full

stop still remains after the K because we need that K as an abbreviation for United

Kingdom. "...you'll understand the culture. Together we can achieve fluency, together

we can grow." So, what you have here, the comma is quite a weak punctuation mark, and

really what this punctuation mark needs to do is join these two ideas together, therefore

the semi-colon is required.

Hope you got that sussed. Why not test your skills now with a quiz after this video? I'll

see you in the next one. Take care.