There's a noted story of a street sign that warns drivers to reduce their speed because there are children in the area. When a comma was removed, "Slow, Children Crossing" was changed to "Slow Children Crossing." One sign warns drivers to slow down, while the other announces that the children may not be very bright. Proper grammar and punctuation let writing flow evenly and allow readers to understand what you are saying without stumbling over how you say it. It's important to understand how to use grammar and punctuation because mistakes can be distracting or lead to confusion.

Nouns - A noun is a person, a place, or a thing.

Pronouns - A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun.

Verbs - Verbs are words that express an action, a movement, or a state of being.

Adjectives - An adjective is a word that describes, identifies, modifies, or quantifies a noun or a pronoun.

Adverbs - An adverb modifies a verb. Words like happily or daily tell how or when an action takes place.

Punctuation - A set of marks, such as the period [.], the question mark [?], or the exclamation point [!],which are used to clarify meanings and separate clauses.

Comma - The comma [,] is a punctuation mark that separates the words or parts of sentences into manageable segments.

• Lists - There are two ways to format lists: Run-in lists (are in the body of the paragraph) and vertical lists (indented and stacked up).
• Conjunctions - Conjunctions are words that join words, phrases, or clauses. The common coordinating conjunctions can be remembered by thinking of the word FANBOYS (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).
• Separating clauses - An can stand on its own as a sentence with a subject and a verb. Two independent clauses must be separated by a punctuation mark or a conjunction.

Semicolon - A semicolon [;] is used to join two related sentences.

Colon - A colon [:] introduces a word, phrase, sentence, or list.

Quotation marks - Quotation marks [""] are used to denote speech or direct and indirect quotes.

Parentheses - Parentheses [( )]are used to include information that wouldn't necessarily fit into the flow of the text.

Ellipsis - An ellipsis […...] is a series of three dots that are used to indicate an omission of a word or words.