Punctuation, Part 2

In finishing up revising my essay, I've reviewed a few more punctuation topics to make sure I'm using punctuation correctly throughout my whole essay.  The additional punctuation topics I chose are semicolons, colons, and apostrophes.

Jelte. "Semicolon." 6/12/05 via Wikimedia Commons.
Public Domain License.

I've used semicolons before, but it was only a few years ago that I started getting used to them.  Before, I would often use a comma where a semicolon should have gone, or perhaps used a dash, neither of which are really correct.  It was helpful to see the list of conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases, because that spelled out very clearly when semicolons should often be used.  The one thing that in this section that I had never learned before was the rule stating not to use a semicolon after but.  For me, that sounds natural in longer sentences, so it was good to see that rule.

I find colons to be more straightforward than semicolons because they are not confused with commas easily.  I didn't know that colons were supposed to be used after a salutation in a letter (although that's not relevant for this class so much, it's still good to know).  I'm comfortable breaking sentences up with a colon, especially in the ways of introducing a quotation, or giving a summary/explanation.  Colons help vary sentence structure, which can be very useful.

I think by now most of us have mastered how to use apostrophes for contractions and possessive words.  However, it's important to note that apostrophes are not used for plural abbreviations, numbers or letters, because that's a mistake that I commonly see.  Recently I began to understand the difference between who's and whose, but that's another mistake that is also common.  It's good to know these rules for certain, so I don't second guess myself when I see a common error.