Sounding too smart: over-punctuating
You are excited about extra punctuation and ready to shake up your usual comma, full-stop, repeat. Great! But take a second to refresh yourself on the semicolon, the colon and the dash (‘en’ dash, if we are getting technical.) The semicolon connects sentences that are pretty related; they both have similar topics. The colon often introduces a list: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook users will all thank you. The (en) dash – which can set a thought apart – can come in handy when you’ve used too many parentheses already. The trick to fancier punctuation is to use sparingly.
Did you know that these are the only ways you should be using a semicolon?
Fragments and run-ons and misplaced full-stops: oh my!
It’s one thing to have a casual tone, “but writing a ‘sentence’ like ‘I went to the beach. Because it was hot.’ is just plain incorrect,” Petras says. To ensure you have a full sentence when you mean to, confirm there is a subject and a predicate (verb) each time. Another easy trick is to read the sentence aloud to see if the period is placed at a natural pause, which it wouldn’t be in the example above (between beach and because).
Using overly formal language
We all have that friend or family member who posts on social media as if they are composing their dissertation – fancy verbiage, long and poetic sentences and complicated punctuation. But they may be accomplishing very little, aside from acquiring some eye rolls from scrollers. Instead, Petras encourages being casual and even using abbreviations such as ‘obvi’ and ‘TMI’ wherever you like. “It isn’t incorrect – it’s relaxed,” she says.