How to place commas correctly. Learning to place punctuation marks - basic rules What do a question mark and an exclamation mark mean together?

Sit down, my friend, I'll tell you a story.
Once upon a time, in blessed ancient times, books were written not only without punctuation marks, but also without spaces at all, and nothing - somehow they were understood.
Then times began to rapidly deteriorate. And so, in the 15th century, She appeared, a comma!!
Well, it began...

Perhaps the comma is the sign that helps more than others to understand the meaning of what is written. “Execution cannot be pardoned” everyone knows.
And there was another case.

One greedy barber decided to save money on a professional artist and painted his own sign. It read:
“Here is the tooth, beards are pulled, smallpox is shaved, ulcers are inoculated, blood is destroyed, hair is grown, nails are curled, heads are cut, etc.”

Do you think it's a joke?
And like this?

In the evenings, I entertained my brother, who was sick, by reading aloud.

The cat watched the movements of the fish that swam in the aquarium with greedy eyes.

Vaska, with whom I had quarreled yesterday, ran towards me with a cheerful face.

Commas, everything - commas, damn them!

For some reason, it is believed that the rules for placing commas are very complex and numerous, so it is easier to use the so-called. "author's" punctuation than to deal with the correct one.
However, it is in vain to think so. The rules for placing commas are quite simple. Let's remember them, but not as in school - “according to the rules”, but - in life, that is, according to the logic of the text. (May Russian language teachers forgive me!)

First, you need to firmly understand that commas can be either PAIRED or SINGLE.

SINGLE COMMA
divide a sentence into parts and allow you to mark the boundaries between these parts.

For example, you need to list homogeneous members.

And how could he not recognize people when tens of thousands of people passed before him over the fifteen years of his service. Among them were engineers, surgeons, actors, women's organizers, embezzlers, housewives, machinists, teachers, mezzo-sopranos, developers, guitarists, pickpockets, dentists, firefighters, girls without specific occupations, photographers, planners, pilots, Pushkin scholars, collective farm chairmen , secret cocottes, racing jockeys, linemen, department store saleswomen, students, hairdressers, designers, lyricists, criminals, professors, former homeowners, pensioners, country teachers, winemakers, cellists, magicians, divorced wives, cafe managers, poker players, homeopaths, accompanists, graphomaniacs, conservatory usherettes, chemists, conductors, athletes, chess players, laboratory assistants, rogues, accountants, schizophrenics, tasters, manicurists, accountants, former clergy, speculators, photographic technicians.
Why did Philip Philipovich need the papers? (Bulgakov. Theatrical novel)

It’s hard to make a mistake here – the intonation of the enumeration helps. You can get confused on homogeneous and heterogeneous definitions.

Example.
In the mornings, the sun hits the gazebo through purple, lilac, green and lemon foliage (Paustovsky).

This sentence contains four definitions for the word “foliage”; they are uniform, since they all name the color and are pronounced with the intonation of enumeration. A COMMA IS APPLIED.

Heterogeneous definitions characterize an object from different angles and are pronounced without enumerative intonation, for example:
It was an unbearably hot July day (Turgenev).
The definition of “hot” tells us about the weather, and the definition of “July” tells us what month that day was in.

You can check whether a comma is needed using the conjunction AND. If it can be inserted, then a comma should be inserted.

He spoke German, French, and English.
He spoke German, French and English.
He spoke German, French, and English.

Now try inserting the conjunction And here:
“Finally we have waited for the first warm days” - the first AND warm ones?? No ice, that means down with the comma.

Likewise:
“Yellow maple leaves were lying everywhere” - “yellow” denotes the color, “maple” the type of tree” - these are heterogeneous definitions. (=conjunction And you can’t insert).
But “yellow, red, green (maple leaves)” are homogeneous definitions, separated by commas.

Let's continue talking about single commas.

In addition to homogeneous members, there is also a need to separate simple parts of a complex sentence from each other. Complex sentences are those that contain two or more grammatical stems (subject-predicate).

For example,
The reeds rustled, the trees bent.
Evening came, it was raining, and the wind was blowing intermittently from the north.

If at school you still couldn’t remember what a subject and predicate are, call on common sense to help. Look for where one part ends (kagbe short sentence) and another begins.

Your reasoning will be something like this: aha! “Evening has come” is an independent unit of information; let me separate it with a comma from another = equally independent in terms of information (“it was raining”). And everything will be fine.

The union I can confuse you. He is so insidious!
As a rule, it is not preceded by a comma.

“The men took off their hats and bowed to the ground.”
This sentence has 1 subject (men) and 2 predicates connected by a conjunction (they took off and bowed).

Or “Women and children fled from shelling” - the opposite case. 2 subjects (women and children) per 1 predicate (saved).

NO COMMA NEEDED!

But it happens that the conjunction AND connects PARTS of sentences.

“The gentleman drove up, and the men took off their hats.” Do you see? 2 grammatical bases – the subject “master”, the predicate “drove up” and “the men” (subject) “took off” (predicate).
This is where we need to take a closer look.

With the union A and BUT (YES in the meaning of BUT) everything is simpler - a comma is always placed in front of them.

The hut is not red in its corners, but red in its pies.
It was smooth on paper, but they forgot about the ravines.
Small spool but precious.

In general, as a rule, you need to put a comma before conjunctions.

I know he will come.
He will come when he wants.

I would like to draw your attention to two subtleties.

The first is the conjunction “because”.

This is where it gets very interesting!
A comma can be placed before a conjunction, or between “because” and “that.” How to figure it out? Only by meaning. The placement of the comma depends on the meaning of the sentence and on some linguistic situations.

Fools and narrow-minded people believe everything because they cannot investigate anything. (Belinsky)

Should you give up on a difficult task just because it is difficult?

The second is “such as”.

He, the red-haired man, can name SUCH names as Dmitry Alekseevich Malyanov, astronomer, Zakhar Zakharovich Gubar, engineer, and Arnold Pavlovich Snegovoy, chemical physicist. (Strugatskys)

Again, catch the meaning of the sentence.

The weather is rainy like in autumn
The weather is like autumn.

The address is ALWAYS SEPARATED BY A COMMA.

He said: I love you, Naina.
But my timid sorrow
Naina listened with pride,
Loving only your charms,
And she answered indifferently:
“Shepherd, I don’t love you!” (Pushkin)

So, friends! After “hello K2!” You MUST use a comma.

If the address is in the middle of a sentence, it is separated by commas on both sides.

Forgive me, peaceful valleys, and you, familiar mountain peaks, and you, familiar forests. (Pushkin)

There are three appeals in this sentence: “peaceful valleys”, “familiar mountain peaks” and “familiar forests”.

As you can see, we have already moved a little away from single commas and are closer to PAIRED commas.

Paired commas highlight the so-called. an independent part of a sentence.
Your test action is to read the sentence WITHOUT the part separated by commas. If the meaning remains the same, you have placed the commas correctly.

“I recently learned that Pechorin died while returning from Persia” (Lermontov).

If we remove “returning from Persia,” the sentence will remain virtually unchanged. It will turn out: “I recently learned that Pechorin died.” This means the commas are placed correctly.
But the options “I recently learned that Pechorin died while returning from Persia” or “I recently learned that Pechorin died while returning from Persia” are incorrect.

So, commas IN MANDATORY ORDER are highlighted:
- participial phrases\individual participles,
- introductory words and sentences,
- comparative turnover.

Participial phrases:

The goose, seeing the children, flew away.

Dymov, smiling good-naturedly and naively, extended his hand to Ryabovsky.

Introductory words:

Vronsky, TO HIS HORROR, felt that he had made a bad, unforgivable move.

Mountain air, WITHOUT ANY DOUBT, has a beneficial effect on human health.

Comparative turnover:
(They can be easily detected by the following conjunctions: as, exactly, as if (as if), as if, that, as and, with what, rather than and many others)

Grandfather threw money at them like they were dogs.

His existence is enclosed in this tight program, like an egg in a shell.

The coachman was as amazed at his generosity as the Frenchman himself at Dubrovsky’s offer.

Attention! Comparative phrases that have become phraseological units (=stable figures of speech) are not separated by commas.
For example,
cuts like butter, pours like a bucket, is red as a lobster, pale as death

Commas and participial phrases.

Participial phrases will be more difficult than participial phrases, because they are separated by commas only if they appear after the word being defined.

Apple grown in the garden - apple grown in the garden
bus painted yellow - bus painted yellow
river covered with ice - river covered with ice

It is clear to PTA that in one article it is impossible to cover all the rules for placing PTA commas, because PTA, after all, PTA there are textbooks!

The purpose of this article was the desire to remind some rules from the school course and call for common sense - when you put commas, think: WHY are you putting them?
Because a misspelled word can still be understood, but missing a single comma can lead to a distortion of the meaning.

To consolidate your memories, we invite you to take a test

Any text contains many punctuation marks. However, users do not always type texts in accordance with accepted rules. For example, spaces often appear before a period or comma, after an opening quotation mark, or before a closing quotation mark. Often punctuation marks are placed incorrectly or used where they are not supposed to. This article covers the basics of correct punctuation.

When writing text you should always remember one rule: There is no space before the punctuation mark, A after space punctuation mark must be placed Necessarily. (There are exceptions for parentheses, dashes, and quotation marks).
Example:
Right:
« This book is undoubted proof that science, like other areas of human activity, has its funny sides. Here you will find a fusion of satirical science and scientific satire...»
Wrong (spaces before and after commas, periods, before ellipses):
« This book is undoubted proof that science, like other areas of human activity, has its funny sides. Here you will find a fusion of satirical science and scientific satire..."(Collection of translations "Physicists continue to joke")

If several punctuation marks follow each other, then there is no space between them, for example: ., .; .: ./ .

The punctuation marks listed below must be written according to the rule: we do not write a space before the sign, but put it after it. This includes commas, semicolons, colons, ellipses, question marks, and exclamation marks.

As for ellipses, when paired with other characters they are written together and with two dots, for example: ?.. !..

A period in the text has several functions:
- a punctuation mark that closes a sentence.
- in combination with other punctuation marks (for example, with brackets or quotation marks), the period is written together. Example: Then he turned his head and threw one of his sidelong glances at me (before that he was looking out the side window of the car ).
- a dot as an abbreviation sign, for example: those. (that is), G. (year, city), gg. (years, cities), etc. (etc).

In texts, several rules must be taken into account when there is no point:
- on the title page;
- in headings and subheadings (the exception is when the heading is written in a line with text);
- at the end of column names in tables;
- after the symbols of metric measures: g, kg, im, cm, m, etc.;
- after technical quantities: Hz, Hz, etc.;
- after abbreviations, for example: RF, MP3, GOST and so on.

Rules for writing quotes

A space is always placed before the opening quote and after the closing quote. There is no space after the opening quotation mark or before the closing quotation mark. For example:

Right:

The thought flashed like lightning: “Why not!”

Wrong:

The thought flashed like lightning: “Why not!” ".

Another important rule concerns the placement of punctuation marks before closing quotation marks: do not put a period, comma, semicolon or colon. These characters are correctly placed after the closing quotation mark.

At the same time, question and exclamation marks, as well as ellipses, are placed before closing quotation marks if they, in meaning, refer only to the expression enclosed in quotation marks.

When in a text one phrase in quotation marks is part of another phrase enclosed in quotation marks, then two quotation marks are not placed in a row at the beginning or end. For example:
JSC “Corporation “First Pancake”.

The use of quotation marks is advisable in the following cases:
- in direct speech, for example: Seeing me, Ganelon and Lance said in one voice: "We are ready".
- in quotes. Example: As the bard said, "Avalon both near and far", - he paraphrased my poems.
- mentioning the conventional names of various objects and concepts, titles of works, for example: newspaper "Morning of the City", factory "Conductor", transmission "GOOG night kids!" etc.
- to give an ironic meaning to individual words or even entire expressions, for example: And after that we'll play "Russian roulette" in your new way. The winner takes all. When I speak "danced", I don't mean flickered, they jumped, changed size, rushed, swirled, flared up to supernova brightness, and then faded to nothing.

At the request of blog visitors, I am writing news)) Many people say, “they press a period, but a comma is entered, or vice versa.”

Rule one. Remember that depending on the language you are typing in (keyboard layout) and depending on whether you hold down the Shift key, any key you use will enter different characters.

Punctuation marks in Russian

(Russian layout).

This picture (above) shows the complete keyboard with all the characters that can be entered. Let's now understand about punctuation marks in Russian layout.

Only those punctuation symbols that can be entered when typing text in Russian are displayed here. It turns out, no matter how hard we try, We will not enter the @ sign on the Russian keyboard.

I think everything is clear with the letters, to make the letter large you need to press Shift + letter (I advise you to read the lesson ")

So, let's pay attention to the top row of keys. If in Russian we simply click on them, numbers will be entered, if we press the Shift key, then those punctuation marks at the top will be entered, not numbers.

Example:
How to enter the comma punctuation mark in Russian? To do this, we need to press the shift key and without releasing its point (the key to the right of the letter u), if we just click on it, we will get a point.
How to enter the number sign - № in Russian? To do this, press the shift key and without releasing its number 3.
How to enter a question mark in Russian? Shift+7, -i.e. press the shift key and without releasing the number 7, and then naturally release the seven and Shift.

Punctuation in English

Everything is the same here, below is a picture with those symbols and punctuation marks that can be entered in English.

Please note that there are characters that can only be entered in Russian or only in English. Also note that on the English layout, a comma is entered by pressing the Russian letter B, and a dot on Y. If you press SHIFT, you will enter a greater than sign or a less than sign< >

Hello!
When combining interrogative and exclamation point which sign comes first?

First there is a question mark, and then an exclamation mark. Reversing the order of characters is incorrect.


	Question No. 246005

Hello! Thank you very much for your answer to the previous question.
Please tell me, in the sentences below, should I put a comma or a dash immediately after direct speech? In the first case, is it necessary to put a comma to close a subordinate clause that begins with the words of the author and ends with direct speech? In the second case, is it necessary to put a comma to close the adverbial phrase? In the third case, is it necessary to put a comma immediately after direct speech before the conjunction “then”? In other words, a comma or a dash?
When Sonya was asked the question: “How old are you?” (,) (-) she always answered the same thing: “No matter how old you are, they are all mine!”
By proving something: “Well, how come you don’t understand!” (,) (-) you turn the client against yourself.
If the client answered: “It’s too expensive for me”(,) (-)then you ask him the question: “...?”
Thank you.