02B: PUNCTUATION+

Knowing how to punctuate will help you clarify rather than confuse.

In 2014, a group of management communication instructors analyzed a stack of student papers to see which types of errors were most prevalent. Out of 1,187 total errors, 439 - almost 40% - were punctuation related. Every sentence contains at least one punctuation mark; most contain multiple marks. So opportunities to get punctuation wrong are everywhere.

In this chapter, we'll clarify the use of the most problematic punctuation marks, starting with the lowly comma (a frequent offender). We'll also cover the uses of capitalization, and how to incorporate numbers into your lucid business prose.