Learning outcomes

Brackets (parentheses)
A parenthesis is a word or phrase inserted into a sentence to explain, clarify or elaborate. It may be placed in brackets or commas.
The English planning was due in (along with everything else) but it was nowhere near completion.
The lead singer (despite being well into his seventies) was amazing.
They can also be used to enclose a comment by the person writing.
Jas is (I believe) the best child for this role.
He was clearly furious about it (not that I blamed him).
The term parentheses can also refer to the brackets themselves.
Activity
Find different ways of punctuating the following to give very different meanings:
Go slow children
Private no fishing allowed
Shoot Jones
Scream a silly word every day
Go slow children: Go slow, children. Go, slow children. Go slow – children.
Private no fishing allowed: PRIVATE! No fishing allowed. Private? No, fishing allowed. Private – no fishing allowed. Private, no fishing allowed.
Shoot Jones: SHOOT, Jones! Shoot Jones?
Scream, a silly word, every day. Scream a silly word every day. Scream a silly word – every day.
Hyphens
A hyphen can be used for a wide range of purposes.

• 
  To join the different parts of a compound noun (see Chapter 2), such as city-centre, although it is more usual for compound nouns to be written as single words:
  

• 
  football;
  
• 
  playground;
  
• 
  greenhouse.
  

• 
  In compound adjectives and longer phrases used as modifiers before nouns:
  

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  The bad-tempered ladybird;
  
• 
  A well-known singer;
  
• 
  A five-year-old boy.
  

• 
  In compound nouns where the second part is a short word like in, off, up or by:
  

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  drive-in;
  
• 
  kick-off;
  
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  top-up;
  
• 
  passer-by.
  

• 
  With certain prefixes including co-, non-, and ex- that traditionally require hyphens:
  

• 
  co-construct;
  
• 
  ex-teacher;
  
• 
  non-viable.
  

• 
  It is quite a common mistake for people to write non as if it were a word in its own right (it should be none when we use it as a word) by failing to hyphenate it to another word. Non is, of course, a word in French (no), but in English it is a bound morpheme (see Chapter 2).
  
• 
  When a compound formed from two nouns is made into a verb:
  

• 
  Risk-taking;
  
• 
  I am going strawberry-picking.
  

• 
  When a compound verb form is made, either by adding a noun to make the original verb more specific:
  

• 
  I am going strawberry-picking.
  
• 
  They enjoyed mountain-climbing.
  
• 
  or by coupling two verbs together:
  
• 
  She always blow-dries her hair.
  
• 
  It is illegal to drink-drive.
  

• 
  To add clarity:
  

• 
  Deice and reignite are much harder to read than de-ice and re-ignite.
  

• 
  To divide words at the end of a line of print. If children need to do this, encourage them to divide the word between syllables to help the reader: for example sur-prise rather than su-rprise.
  

June Crebbin’s poem ‘River’ (in Foster, 2009) uses hyphens to create evocative compound nouns.
boat-carrier
bank-lapper
home-provider
tree-reflector
leaf-catcher
field-wanderer
stone-smoother
fast-mover
gentle-stroller
sun-sparkler
sea-seeker
Try finishing her ‘City River’ poem (in Corbett, 2006, p.254) in the same way:
wall
factory
backstreet
bridge
steps
park
summer
ducks
choppy
crows
onward
Bullet points
Bullet points are useful when we want to present a list, especially of items with several words, as information can be easier to read than in a sentence. There are a different ways to present bullet points and the key is to be consistent.