This Sept. 24 is National Punctuation Day. It’s a day that grammar nerds take very seriously to decry the fall of Western Civilization as evidenced by the complete lack of attention paid to grammar and punctuation today. Well, mostly by those dastardly social media gluttons, the Millennials and Generation Z. Of course, the Grammar Gestapo totally disregard the fact that we’re Americans, darn it, and we’ve been merrily ignoring most grammar rules for over 242 years and the Declaration of Independence (from proper grammar)!

In honor of today, I’m not going to give you a big punctuation lecture, but I am going to briefly point out three common culprits to modern punctuation mistakes. (Hey! Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady!) I do this because even though the attitudes towards punctuation are relaxed, these three punctuation marks are misused so often that it really can affect your professional image—and for the better If you use them correctly.

Easy rules will help you determine whether you need a comma, semicolon or colon:

Commas     ¸

Use the comma to separate independent clauses joined by a conjunction. The coordinating conjunctions are: but, and, so, for, nor, yet and or. Place the comma before the conjunction.

• I needed to talk to the boss, but she was in a meeting.
• Use the comma to set off the nonrestrictive element in a sentence.
• I gave the approval letter to Jean, the woman with the long hair, on the third floor.
• Use the comma to set off conjunctive adverbs and adverbial phrases.
• I went to the door to see him; he turned, however, and walked away.
• The Toledo office, on the other hand, is doing great.

Semicolons     ;

Use the semicolon to separate related independent clauses that are not joined by a coordinating conjunction.

• I invited the Douglas family; I left the Johnsons off the list.   

Use the semicolon to set off items in a list when one or more items in that list contain commas.

• Francis brought bagels with raisins, walnuts and cranberries; six pints of coffee; four bags of cinnamon twists, complete with frosting; and a dozen doughnuts.

Colons     :

Use the colon to introduce information or to elaborate on an element in a sentence. Colons usually fall before a listing, before direct quotations in formal essays or after the salutation in formal correspondence.

• There are several things we still need: Four reams of paper, six packs of strapping tape, three box cutters, eight balls of twine and two red markers.

The rule for capitalizing the first word after the colon is that it should be lower-cased if the words after the colon form a dependent clause (that is, if they could not stand on their own as a complete sentence) and if it is a complete (independent) clause, you can capitalize it or not.

See? That wasn’t so bad.