Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the time it has taken me to upload this. I’d explain why, but it would probably just look like I’m making excuses. So let’s skip the reasons and get down to business.

I’m AikaHikari122 and I’m here to teach you the basics of writing.

Why am I doing this? Simply because the past year or two I’ve noticed that fanfiction writers have started ‘lacking’ in the skill of writing. And I don’t mean that in a harsh, horrible way. I just mean to say that their stories tend to have terrible punctuation and grammar, as well as plots and characters.

For the longest time I’ve sat and done nothing about it. Perhaps a groan and moan at the work before clicking off and never offering help.

But today is the day I help the writers of AsianFanfics.

 Firstly, I’ll go over the basics – sentence structure.

Hopefully everyone knows that you start a sentence with a capital letter and end it with a period (.). That’s the type of stuff you learn in your first year of school and you do use it for the rest of your life. So I’m hoping no one has forgotten or didn’t know this.

But there are more punctuation marks than just the full stop. So I’ll take this time to teach you how to use them.

Next is the comma (,). This is used to separate clauses, you can then insert more information, and return to the original purpose or form of the sentence.

As well as using a period (.) to end the sentence you can use exclamation (!) and question marks (?).
An exclamation mark (!) is used to indicate that something is important or said/stated with excitement or strong emotion.
Obviously, the question mark (?) is used after questions.
Do not abuse these! You only need to use one to get your point across. Ending a sentence with more than one is not proper grammar!!!!

It also looks stupid. Personally it gives me a head ache.

Then there’s the apostrophe (‘), this is not to be confused with the speech mark (“). Apostrophes are used state ownership or an abbreviation in a work, e.g. It’s Mark’s cake.
In this case, “it’s” is the short form of it is and the cake belongs to Mark.

Speech marks are used to indicate someone saying something or a quote.  E.g:
“I lost my keys.” Selphie sighed as she shook her head.
“What?” Megan asked.
“She said “I lost my keys”.” Mark laughed.

Now I’ll explain the semicolon(;) and colon(:).
The semicolon can be used the same way as a comma. It joins together two sentences by creating clauses; be careful that the clauses are not too complex. If they are, you’ll find it easier to use a full stop.
You can also use it to separate a list of complex items. The e.g. I found for this was “I went to the show with Jake, my close friend; his friend, Jane; and her best friend, Jenna.”

The colon can be used to make a list that includes nouns. E.g. The professor has given me three options: to retake the exam, to accept the extra credit assignment, or to fail the class

You don’t really need to know this next one but it can come in handy while trying to sound complex.
This is the hyphen (-) and this (–) is a dash. They look similar but the dash is longer.
The hyphen is used to join words together to create compound words. An example would be up-to-date.
It can also be used to make words easier to read. Such as re-record.

The dash (–) on the other hand is used to create a break in the sentence so that you can add a comment or thought. It can be – but is not always – used like this.
You don’t always have to have another part at the end of the sentence – but you can if you want to.

Don’t worry if you didn’t get everything. I’ve only learnt how to use punctuation properly the past few months because my teachers either taught it wrong or skipped it completely. I had to look it up and teach myself.

For homework I would like you to comment with a paragraph containing at least five pieces of punctuation above. Periods and apostrophes do not count but you should include them anyway.

Note: If you are not interested in this part of the AFF University you  do not need to engage in the homework.