• Dashes: used sometimes instead of commas.  This creates a less formal tone.

• Surprise and irony: use a dash to create a sense of surprise or signal an ironic comment
• I told them that I wasn't mad about the practical jokes—but they needed to watch their backs.

• Parentheses: can be used in the following ways:

• Explanatory Materials
• Use parentheses around explanatory materials like so:  I disliked some of her personality traits (her aggression, her gossipy nature, and her paranoia), but overall I thought she was a kind person.
• Lists within Sentences
• He demanded she change three things: (1) her dislike of his best friend, (2) her distrust of his fidelity, and (3) her disdain for beer.
• Asides
• Josh Stanos (my ex-boyfriend) was recently released on parole.

• Apostrophes and Hyphens: we use an apostrophe in both contractions and possessives.

• Apostrophes

• Possessives: nouns or indefinite pronouns
• Singular nouns: Dr. Perrin's class was always fascinating.
• Plural nouns: The students got to critique all the instructors' classes.
• Compound nouns: Her mother-in-law's doctor called to report.
• Two or more nouns: with two or more nouns in a sentence showing ownership, you only place the apostrophe on the last noun to show joint ownership; however, if it is individual ownership, each noun will have an apostrophe.
• Roman and Melissa's car quit working suddenly.
• Austin's and Taylor's classes were very difficult.
• Contractions:  use an apostrophe to replace the letter or letters deleted in a contraction.
• do not (don't), that is (that's), It is (it's)

• Hyphens:  these can be used in the following ways

• Compound modifiers:  can be used to punctuate compound modifiers that work together
• My two-year-old nephew is so adorable.
• Compound words
• I frequently want to pull out my hair around my mother-in-law.
• Prefixes and suffixes
• The most commonly used prefixes are ex-, pro-, self-, and neo-.  A common suffix is –elect.
• Other uses
• When typing a document, you may need to use a hyphen at the end of a line to divide a word between syllables
• Written fractions contain hyphens (one-fourth)
• In numbers (from twenty-one to ninety-nine)

 

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